Benton County Democratic Central Committee

WORLD OF HURT

It checks out that big banks are bitterly opposed to new regulations from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would limit how much they can charge customers in overdraft fees. After all, banks take in more than $8 billion a year in consumer fees, and they are pretty much always going to oppose constraints on their profits.

But it’s not obvious how anyone else could try and make it sound like there are legitimate reasons for companies with trillions of dollars in assets to price gouge people who temporarily run out of money before their next paycheck. So, credit of a sort to Megan McArdle, who writes in the Washington Post that “Capping overdraft fees could actually hurt poor families.” And while that’s a standard piece of corporate bullshit, it does imply something curious: that high overdraft fees help the very people they’re intended to hurt. So really what we have here is an openly sadist approach to income inequality and consumer protection in the pages of one of the most influential newspapers in the country.

Make it make sense.

U.S. households pay more than half of their income to their landlords in the form of rent. Housing is generally considered affordable if it costs less than one-third of your income. 

were laid off from Microsoft’s videogame division soon after the company closed its purchase of Activision Blizzard. When the purchase was first announced, the then-CEO of the acquired company assured employees that “the transition is going to be smooth because [Microsoft is] committed to trying to retain as many of our people as possible.”

would be reaped each year by billionaire Charles Koch if a proposed new flat income tax is implemented by the state of Kansas. The Republican Speaker of the State House said the law was “purposely designed to primarily help those who are on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.”

A lot of us like to assume that  political debates about budgets and spending are primarily debates about issues, priorities, and economics. Commentators often write about this stuff as battles of ideas, taking it as a given that people analyze these questions according to how they land on an ideological spectrum. And on some matters, that might very well be true.

But sometimes it’s just words. Debates about “welfare” have played an important role in American politics, at least since President Reagan went after “welfare queens” and then President Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it.” And as the chart below highlights, “welfare” remains highly unpopular: just 30% of Americans tell pollsters we should spend more on “welfare.” But instead ask if we should spend more money on “assistance to the poor” — quite literally welfare by another name — and you find overwhelming 71% support.

Much has already been written about the multiple failures of Boeing management which led to their latest round of serious safety and quality control issues. And given the company’s recent history, which includes $60 billion in stock buybacks, two headquarters moves, and intense lobbying for exemptions from safety rules, many more deep dives and analyses of archival documents remain ahead. 

But amidst all this well-considered hindsight, it’s quite extraordinary to revisit the foresight shown in this article — published about a month before the Alaska door plug incident — which examines concerns about Boeing’s practice of conducting self-inspections on quality issues. The piece details how the strong commitment of front-line workers to high-quality work has been repeatedly undermined by management decisions aimed at maximizing short-term profits. And strikingly, in a discussion of why independent safety inspections matter, an example is offered which is remarkably prescient given the events that followed: namely, how to confirm that bolts are tightened to specifications.

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

Last week, we took to the streets. Next week, we get ready for the fight ahead.

Polls show the country is more divided than ever. The only way to defeat the MAGA cartel is to build a movement across race, class, and identity. 

Join us for a 60-minute training on how to talk to your loved ones, neighbors, and networks about freedom over fascism.

Join us on Feb 7th for our Digital Defenders training >>>

We know that we’re in this fight for the long haul. It will take a mass movement building narrative and political power to take back our rights. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.

Register here >>>

In struggle,
Women’s March

P.S. Want to dive deeper? Our host, Anat Shenker-Osorio, just launched season 3 of her podcast Words to Win By, where each episode profiles a campaign we won somewhere in the world and how we did it. We’ve covered legalizing abortion in Argentina, getting Jacinda Ardern elected Prime Minister in New Zealand, and flipping WI in 2020 among others. The third season is out now!

We have more great news coming out of Olympia! Currently, we are following 4 bills that are on track to get floor votes. This includes:

• HB 1903 – Requiring reporting of lost or stolen firearms
• HB 2021 – Mandate WSP to destroy confiscated firearms
• HB 2118 – Outlining requirements for dealer licensing
• SB 5444 – Concerning firearm-sensitive places

I know we’ve asked a lot of you, but we need your help to get these lifesaving bills across the finish line. Email your legislators now and urge them to vote YES on gun violence prevention legislation!

Both chambers will begin floor votes next week, which means we have a limited number of days in which our bills can be voted on. We need every voice possible echoing the impact these life-saving policies will have on our communities. Take one minute out of your day and email your legislators now!

Hazel (They/them)
Policy and Advocacy Manager
Alliance for Gun Responsibility

ALLIANCE FOR GUN RESPONSIBILITY
P.O. Box 4187 Seattle, WA 98194

The gun lobby is flooding legislators’ inboxes to oppose commonsense gun violence prevention measures, and we need to make sure our voices are heard. Will you take time today to email your legislators?

Each day, we wake up to a barrage of headlines highlighting the persistent challenge of gun violence. However, there are concrete solutions within our reach that can effectively curb fatalities and injuries caused by firearms on a statewide scale. Fortunately, this year, we’ve crafted a comprehensive agenda poised to address these issues head-on. Our initiatives include:

• Requiring a permit to purchase firearms
• Requiring reporting of lost and stolen firearms 
• Outlining requirements for dealer responsibility 
• Keeping firearms out of specific places like parks, libraries, zoos, aquariums, and transit centers 
• Restricting bulk weapons purchases 
• And much more

Your action today is key to turning these bills into law. Please use the link below to contact your state legislators and voice your support for this comprehensive legislative package. By doing so, you help ensure the safety and well-being of our communities across Washington.

Thanks for helping us advance these lifesaving bills,

Abdirahman Mohamed (he/him)
Director of Communication 
Alliance for Gun Responsibility 

P.S. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check out our legislative agenda here.

ALLIANCE FOR GUN RESPONSIBILITY
P.O. Box 4187 Seattle, WA 98194

WHERE THE HEART IS

Airbnb has faced criticism for years over the way its short-term vacation rentals can drive up the price of rental housing, particularly in tourism-heavy areas. The fundamental problem is baked into the model: renting a unit for upwards of $200 a night on Airbnb promises to bring a lot more money than a standard lease with a tenant would bring in. Landlords tend to follow the money, so when there’s demand for Airbnb, housing tends to move into the vacation rental market, and housing for working people becomes more expensive, and harder to find.

So it’s pretty extraordinary that Airbnb had the chutzpah to announce last week that they’re launching a “council of experts” tasked with finding ways to improve housing affordability. That’s right: a company whose entire business model is premised on replacing monthly rentals for people with jobs into daily rentals for people on vacation is going to study how they might… reverse their own direct impact. This is like Walmart announcing they’re going to solve corporate concentration, DoorDash taking on the problem of high delivery fees, or Larry Summers working to address the impact of bank deregulation. How did the PR staff even manage to send out the press release without bursting into uncontrollable laughter?

Make it make sense.

in cost savings was found by the BART transit agency in the San Francisco Bay area in the recent design and purchase of several hundred new railcars. By doing a substantial amount of design work in-house instead of through corporate subcontractors, the agency managed to deliver a major project significantly under budget. 

have rejected federal funds that would have provided food assistance over the summer to hungry children who receive free and reduced price lunches during the school year. The food assistance would have come at zero cost to state budgets. 

will be paid to Uber & Lyft drivers in New York State as a settlement of charges the companies cheated drivers of pay and failed to provide sick days. Dig deeper into the startling scale of wage theft heist in the latest video on our YouTube channel, Who Gets What and Why.

Social Security keeps millions of people out of poverty, and when people get their Social Security checks, they spend them at local businesses, putting that money right back into the economy. So it’s never really made sense that so many mainstream politicos, economists, and writers seem so determined to find a way to cut this large, successful, and popular public program. Unless, of course, it’s precisely the scale, success, and popularity of the program that has made it such a key target for the trickle-down crew.

Perhaps that’s also why for all the decades of efforts to attack Social Security and replace it with “market-based alternatives”, there never seems to be much talk about the massive budgetary cost of the tax benefits that go to private retirement savings vehicles like 401(k) accounts, which total about $185 billion a year. And as the chart below shows, the value of these tax benefits goes disproportionately to the richest people, while the poorest 60% of the country only receives 15% of the benefits. So next time some self-important “expert” blabs about how we need to cut Social Security, maybe they could look here first.

President Biden’s signature investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and American manufacturing are beginning to come online, and to the administration’s credit, they’re doing what they can to shine a spotlight on what they’ve accomplished. As Lael Brainard, one of Biden’s top economic advisors, argues, the administration is doing nothing less than “engineering a revival of economically disadvantaged communities across the nation.” 

And this isn’t just a consequence of a strong economy overall: they’re also pursuing “place-based strategies” which take a comprehensive approach to reviving former industrial areas like Allentown, Pennsylvania. As Brainard articulates, this is a sharp contrast from decades of trickle-down approaches to economic growth, and the results are clear. While decades of deregulation and tax cuts only increased inequality, a few years of middle-out economics have driven the unemployment rate in Allentown down to just 3.9%. This is just one example among hundreds, but notably, this is less unemployment than the city saw before the pandemic and dramatically less than the nearly 10% unemployment the city saw in the depths of the 2008 financial crisis. 

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

This past weekend we took to the streets. Thousands of women showed up at hundreds of marches across the country!

We raised hell. We showed politicians and the anti-abortion movement that we are organized, united, and stronger than ever.

We did this.

To every person reading this: Thank you for your involvement in this movement. Thank you for showing up, speaking out, and donating what you can, when you can.

Because WE show up for US – and the world is taking notice.

There are many more fights to come – in the streets, at the voting booth, and at state capitols all over the country. Help us grow our impact and our movement with a contribution of any amount.

Thank you,

All of us at Women’s March HQ