Benton County Democratic Central Committee

LIVE LONG OR PROSPER?

One of the most basic — and ridiculous — lines from trickle-downers is the idea that what’s good for rich people is good for everyone, and that what’s good for working people is actually bad for everyone. Thus we regularly read that good news is bad news, bad news is good news…and now, in a groundbreaking new effort at financial absurdity: recessions are good for you. No joke: that’s what Tyler Cowen writes in Bloomberg, citing a new study that supposedly finds that “The Great Recession provided one in twenty-five 55-year-olds with an extra year of life.” 

Cowen speculates that maybe this finding resulted from that fact that “some people who lose their jobs might be able to spend more time exercising,” or have “less money to spend on alcohol or other drugs,” or something. And while that may sound entirely ridiculous, keep in mind that this is not a new topic for this author — in fact, back during the recession itself, this very same guy was already musing about how actually recessions are kinda good . And yet despite all this Very Deep Thinking, somehow he entirely leaves out the fact that a very big and very relevant thing happened during the Great Recession: the roll-out of expanded healthcare access under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. But regardless, until Cowen takes the next step and prescribes less money, fewer jobs, and more unemployment for economic commentators and rich people , it’s safe to say that maybe he’s not as convinced of his theory as he indicates…even though he’s been getting paid to write this nonsense for 15 years!

Make it make sense.

was handed over to scammers by a personal finance columnist who has for years provided money and budget advice in prominent publications. The victim reports she believed she was giving the cash to the CIA as part of an identity theft investigation, and that they would give her a Treasury check for the same amount the shoebox held.

ago, scientific experts working in the plastics industry determined that recycling plastics wasn’t viable. But major plastics makers continued to tout recycling — even printing recycling symbols on effectively non-recyclable products — as part of a largely successful effort to avoid other forms of regulation of their waste production.

will be the minimum wage effective July 1st for large employers in the Seattle suburb of Renton, Washington . Voters there passed a ballot initiative last week which sets one of the highest pay floors in the nation.

Once considered a form of “welfare,” Medicaid was expanded under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act to cover a dramatically larger proportion of people than it covered before. While some Republican governors have tried to make it a badge of political honor to reject providing more people health coverage, Medicaid expansion has won every time it’s gone to the ballot — even in conservative states, and often by large margins.

Now it appears the growing reach of Medicaid is increasingly its political durability. As the chart below from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows, more than three-quarters of Americans have a favorable or very favorable view of Medicaid, including almost two-thirds of Republicans. Likely a key piece of the reason for this remarkably positive public assessment: Kaiser also found that two-thirds of adults in the U.S. say they have had some connection to the Medicaid program. And while that might be an indictment of the US private health insurance market, it’s also a vote of confidence in the idea that government can in fact do its job — when the politicians allow it.

The prices of publicly-traded stocks can gyrate dramatically when quarterly earnings reports come in, as investors process key reported metrics, make projections about how that data will affect future earnings, and digest trends captured in earnings announcements . Computerized trading plays a role too, as algorithms digest reports as quickly as possible in an effort to get ahead of the rest of the market when news breaks.

So when Lyft’s official earnings report included a forecast that a key earnings metric would rise 5% over the year ahead , the response was swift. Almost immediately after that announcement was out on the wire, Lyft’s stock shot up 62%, creating millions and millions of dollars of paper profits for stockholders. But the party was over just five minutes later, when the company reported the dramatic jump in that key figure was a typo, and the actual anticipated increase was not 5%, but 0.5% . It’s all a good reminder of how many little glitches there seem to be in that old-fashioned neoliberal assumption that markets are naturally efficient systems incapable of error.

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Civic Action
119 1st Avenue South Suite 320
Seattle, WA 98014
United States

Good Afternoon,

The Benton County Canvassing Board will be meeting at various times during the February 13, 2024 Special Election cycle.  This is to advise you of the current ballot processing schedule and canvassing board meetings for this election. 

• Drop boxes emptied
• Signature verification
• Prepping ballots for scanning
• Scanning of ballots
• Ballot adjudication/resolution
• • January 9 – Official Logic and Accuracy Test @ 2 pm
  • February 22 – Pre-Certification processes begin for the February Special Election @ 9 am
  • February 23 – Certification of the February Special Election @ 9am

The processing schedule may be modified from time to time depending on the number of ballots received on a daily basis.

All election processes will take place at the Benton County Voting Center, located at 2618 N. Columbia Center Blvd., Richland. 

During the course of processing, no persons except those employed and authorized by the county auditor may touch any ballot, ballot container, or vote tallying system.  We also ask that no photos be taken without the approval of the Election Manager.

To determine which processes are being conducted on a given day, we advise that observers contact our office directly.  Please note that the February Special Election only involves Prosser School District and Paterson School District.

Please let me know if you should have any questions

Amanda Hatfield
Elections Manager
Benton County Auditor | Elections Division
2618 N. Columbia Center Blvd. | Richland, WA 99352
(509) 736-3085 ext. 5639
Email: amanda.hatfield@co.benton.wa.us
www.bentonauditor.com

BACK TO THE FUTURE

There’s something both compelling and maddening about Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork. It’s not just that his story combines that peculiar combination of inexplicable charisma and extraordinary failure which makes for a good Hollywood adaptation. It’s also the fact that he somehow managed to raise $13 billion for his co-working company from some of the world’s wealthiest and most sophisticated investors, led it to financial collapse, and somehow emerged from it all as perhaps the only person to make a dime from the adventure, getting a massive payoff to exit the company and landing on his feet with a $2.2 billion personal fortune.

So it’s hard to know how to process the latest chapter in Neumann’s saga: absurd as it sounds, he is currently attempting to purchase the remains of WeWork now that the company has gone through a few rounds of restructuring that followed his leadership of the company. Credit for the gall required by Neumann to return to the scene. But what’s truly extraordinary is the fact that he nailed down investors! That’s right: just a few years after destroying billions of dollars of wealth on WeWork, there are still banks, hedge funds, and venture capitalists still willing to lend the guy a few hundred million, cross their fingers, and give it all another try.

Make it make sense.

worth of agricultural products were produced by prison labor in the US and sold to private businesses over just the past six years. One of the largest providers of prison labor is the Angola correctional facility in Louisiana, which was formerly a plantation where hundreds were enslaved.

was paid out by a finance employee to a fraudulent account after the employee followed specific instructions from what he believed was his company’s Chief Financial Officer. The employee had been initially suspicious, but made the payment after attending a Zoom meeting whose other attendees turned out to be AI-generated deepfakes.

in additional economic activity would be generated if US women worked at the same rate as women do in similar countries which provide paid family leave. Only 14 states currently provide paid family leave benefits.

One of the standard moves of anti-immigrant politicians has always been to create fears around the idea that people are coming from other countries to take jobs and consume resources. In addition to the obvious racism involved, the underlying economic assumption here is that jobs and the economy are a zero-sum game: anyone who gets a job can only get that job because they’re taking it from someone else. This might even sound somewhat logical if you think that there are a fixed number of jobs available at a time, created by rich people and corporate profits.

But a recent analysis from the CBO underscores the extent to which this kill-or-be-killed logic is simply false. They found that the increasing rate of immigration to the US is substantially increasing the size of the labor force, by about 5.2 million people. And contrary to xenophobic fears — but just as middle-out economics argues — more people with more jobs means more demand, which means a stronger economy. In fact, the CBO predicts that our economy will be $7 trillion larger over the next decade than it would have been with lower rates of immigration. In other words, people coming to the US for a better life aren’t taking jobs — they’re creating them.

American unions are generally built on a workplace-by-workplace basis. Typically, workers at your specific location of your specific employer in your specific industry have to organize and negotiate a contract before you get the full representational benefits of being in a union. That can make building a union extraordinarily tough in highly fragmented industries — there are so many different workplaces and so many different employers in the fast food industry, for example, that it’s tough to even imagine how workers could organize on the scale necessary to have the power to raise standards in the industry.

But fast food workers just launched a whole new kind of union aimed at addressing this very problem — and the implications could be extraordinary. Last year, the state of California passed a law that created a new structure for fast food workers to organize unions. Workers are now able to organize on an industry-wide basis across the entire state. The union can lobby for local-level labor protections, and representatives of workers will serve on a statewide council which is empowered to set standards throughout the industry. This model — often known as “sectoral bargaining” — is common in parts of Europe, but it’s essentially brand new in the US and has massive potential to serve as a whole new model to rebuild worker power in a whole new way.

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Civic Action
119 1st Avenue South Suite 320
Seattle, WA 98014
United States

No matter where we live in Washington, most of us believe the law should apply to everyone equally. That’s why holding police officers accountable for breaking the law is so important. But right now, most violations by police go unpunished, as local oversight is hamstrung.

As a result, we’re supporting a bill to create truly independent investigations into police misconduct by giving the Attorney General’s office the power to investigate patterns of misconduct when law enforcement violates the constitutional rights of all Washingtonians!

This legislation is coming up for a vote soon, but Republican members of the House have introduced “poison pill amendments” meant to kill the bill in all but name. We need lawmakers to hear our voices loud and clear that we want House Bill 1445 passed without these amendments to hold our criminal legal system to the same standards that it holds all of us. Will you send a message to your lawmakers today?

We can’t let Republican Representatives like Suzanne Schmidt and April Connors sink this important bill for accountability across our state.

Thanks for all that you do,
Rosey and the entire team at Fuse

P.S. Creating true accountability for rotten cops is going to take a lot of work to achieve. Will you chip in $5 now to help us pass these critical progressive reforms?

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Fuse is the state’s largest progressive organization — people creating change online, on the ground, and on issues that matter.

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