News & Stories

Rebuilding Our Economic Future has put together a couple of fact sheets on how last year’s budget cuts affected Washington’s community and technical colleges and public universities. You can probably guess: enrollments are through the roof as people try to retrain and retool for their next job – but at the same time, financial aid […]

The $2.6 billion revenue shortfall created by the recession has generated no shortage of ideas about how to change Washington’s budget and tax structure to ensure important public systems and structures — like schools, public safety, and transportation, to name just three — stay intact. Most proposals include three possibilities: 1) revenue increases (by ending […]

Michelle Obama on work and family: I’d like to just spend a few brief moments talking about today, an issue that I’ve talked a lot about, and that’s the issue of work-life balance. You know it: the constant struggle to meet our responsibilities both as employees, but also as breadwinners, and mothers and fathers. … […]

In a word: No. In two words: no again. In the posts linked above, Paul Krugman puts one economic shiv after another in the fallacious reasoning used by many critics of the minimum wage. And you don’t need to speak the language of an economist to understand what he’s saying — though he backs it […]

Washington State is losing an estimated 44,000 private and public sector jobs due to billions of dollars in state budget cuts in 2009 – and further cuts could axe another 33,600, according to EOI’s latest economic analysis. By contrast, a combination of new state taxes and federal aid to fill the state’s budget gap could […]

Washington State is once again facing a budget crisis. The economic woes of the Great Recession are hitting state revenues hard, with a projected shortfall of $2.6 billion. In upcoming discussions and votes on a 2010-2011 supplemental budget, Washington lawmakers will be presented with a stark choice: raise new revenue – or cut thousands of […]

The current state budget proposal relies on huge budget cuts to K-12 schools, higher education, health care, public safety and other important services. Those cuts will devastate Washington families and jeopardize the future of our state’s children. See how it will affect your local school district here. But cutting millions more from our classrooms will […]

Remember those ’80’s commercials with the tagline, “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen”? It turns out that when 20,000 Washingtonians talk, the same is true in Olympia. In the Hutton ads, a whole bunch of people would be merrily shopping, dining or walking through the airport when someone would say, “Well my broker is with […]

When the folks from Rebuilding Our Economic Future brought over 20,000 petition signatures to Olympia calling for a fair and humane budget, elected leaders weren’t the only ones listening. Tim Eyman got an earful too: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVQ3mZ1HUQo]

Seattle Times | Gregoire’s plan to fill budget hole: cuts, taxes, federal help | Gov. Chris Gregoire proposed Tuesday what she called a “responsible, balanced approach of painful cuts and new revenue” to close the state’s $2.6 billion budget shortfall. But Gregoire’s latest budget blueprint — which relies heavily on hoped-for federal money and one-time […]

Posted at Truthout.org The deficit hawks in Congress are pushing again to establish a special commission to deal with the problem of the deficit. They are trying to include a provision establishing such a commission as part of a bill to increase the country’s debt ceiling. The deal is that this commission would produce a […]

In 2008, the recession hit construction and manufacturing especially hard, causing unemployment in those largely male-dominated industries to increase dramatically. And retail sales have also experienced widespread layoffs, especially in motor-vehicle related sales and building/garden supply stores which are 79% and 65% male, respectively. Women’s contributions to family earnings leapt during the first year of […]

Huffington Post -> Paid Leave Makes Horse Sense: Vacations are good for your health. And, you don’t need to get away to any fancy Caribbean retreat to get the benefit of time-off from work. But it helps if you are a horse. In New York City, that is. | More Sloan Work and Family Network […]

We face stark choices in Washington State this year about our future and the things we value. For example: Do we put college out of reach for more than 10,000 low-income students by cutting their financial aid — or do we close unjustified tax loopholes? Do we kick hundreds of thousands of people (including 16,000 […]

From the Everett Herald: We begin 2010 with a pretty severe hangover from 2009. The national economy is bouncing along the bottom, unemployment continues at record high levels, consumption is down, tax receipts are dwindling, and public services have been pulled back just when we need them the most. In short, all the “hope” of […]

Crosscut -> How budget cuts short-changed the UW: Some straight talk about complicated budget maneuvers, making clear that the University was one of the biggest losers in the nation, and the state. Confused about how the University of Washington fared in the 2009-11 biennial budget? So was I — and I’m an insider, having devoted […]

Halfway through the 111th congressional session, recent headlines have focused almost exclusively on health care reform. But our elected officials have made progress on important work-family legislation as well: The Healthy Families Act (House and Senate) has received overwhelming support. More than 125 Representative and Senators are co-sponsoring the legislation. The Act would provide a […]

ABC News -> Cities, Counties Take Back Corporate Tax Breaks: Cash-strapped communities have a message for corporations that promised jobs in return for tax breaks: A deal’s a deal. As the economy sputters along, municipalities struggling to fix roads, fund schools and pay bills increasingly are rescinding tax abatements to companies that don’t hire enough […]

In the upcoming legislative session, our elected officials will need to take a hard look at revenue increases necessary to maintain essential public services. Possibilities include ending special tax breaks, expanding the sales tax base, increasing sin taxes and taxing pollution. But we also need to tackle reform of Washington’s tax structure. According to “Who […]

The U.S. is currently the only developed nation that does not require some paid sick leave for workers. Nearly 40 percent of private sector workers have no paid sick leave, including 78 percent of hotel workers and 85 percent of food service workers. A survey last year by the National Opinion Research Center at the […]

When the first cases of the H1N1 virus (swine flu) were confirmed in America back in April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised that sick individuals stay home from work or school. “Influenza is thought to spread mainly person-to-person through coughing or sneezing of infected people,” the CDC said. “If you get sick, […]

Big business organizations have panned the notion of required sick leave, with the Chamber of Commerce saying that “the problem is not nearly as great as some people say,” and the National Association of Manufacturers warning that the Healthy Families Act “would impose an inflexible government mandate on employers, making it more difficult for manufacturers […]

It wouldn’t be the holidays if we didn’t have grinches. In the spirit of the season, this week we saw calls to lower the federal minimum wage (yes, you read that correctly), thinly disguised as a way to help the economy. In this time of recession and high unemployment, however, that is actually the last […]

Two major cities — San Francisco and Washington D.C. — have implemented mandatory paid sick leave policies, while a third — Milwaukee — has passed the requirement, only to see it tied up in court. In addition, 15 states have proposed mandatory sick leave laws. “We are all being advised by our doctors to stay […]

From the Everett Herald: Last week the 787 finally made it up into the air for its first test flight. I watched its smooth take-off, and cheered, along with thousands of other citizens in our state. It seemed like we could claim again another milestone for flight, thanks to the Machinists and engineers who put […]