No deal at Boeing: Boeing Machinists voted Wednesday to reject the company’s latest contract offer, continuing their strike that began on September 13. According to the Seattle Times, some union members said the deal failed to deliver high enough wage increases; others are holding out for the return of their pensions. (The company claims pensions are a nonstarter.) Machinists rejected the proposal with 64 percent voting no. The deal would have increased general wages 35 percent over four years, raised Boeing’s 401(k) contribution, and guaranteed four percent annual bonuses.
Of course, the strike isn’t Boeing’s only problem: The company reported this week that it lost more than $6 billion last quarter. New CEO Kelly Ortberg says company executives should spend more time on the factory floor to “prevent the festering of issues and work better together to identify, fix, and understand root cause,” KING 5 reports.
BOEING CONTRACT: @IAM751 and W24 members have voted by 64% to reject Boeing’s contract proposal.
After 10 years of sacrifice, we still have ground to make up. We hope to resume negotiations promptly.
The entire IAM stands with our Boeing membership. https://t.co/sigbEntZ9K
— Machinists Union (@MachinistsUnion) October 24, 2024
For the West Seattle heads: The Sound Transit board may vote today on the route and station locations for light rail to West Seattle. The answer we won’t get? How the agency plans to cover the rising cost of that line, pegged last month at around $7 billion.
Closing arguments in Kroger-Albertsons merger trial: In case you forgot about this one, Kroger and Albertsons, two companies that control more than half of the grocery stores in the state, want to merge. The Federal Trade Commission and Attorney General Bob Ferguson aren’t having it. They argue the merger would mean less competition and higher prices. The two sides made their closing arguments this week, so the decision now rests in the hands of a judge. That said, court-watchers expect a federal ruling in December that could potentially supersede any state rulings.
Seattle’s tech industry continues to cut jobs: In pursuit of the almighty “right-sizing/reorganizing,” Seattle’s tech industry dropped 6,100 jobs this year, a four percent decline, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports.
Did you know our boot-licking city council is actually held hostage by a “very militant wing of the labor movement?” So says the Seattle Times Editorial Board and the owner of Moshi Moshi Sushi, who are still whining that the council failed to protect the City’s two-tiered minimum wage that allows “small” businesses (who employ fewer than 500 workers) to pay less than larger businesses. The Ed Board is big mad that Council Member Joy Hollingsworth folded immediately under a wave of pressure and that Mayor Bruce Harrell “didn’t budge” to help restaurant owners pay workers less. Their conclusion: “The loudest voices” still run the show at City Hall. We wish.
More media critique: KUOW published a glowing summary of the work Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Reichert did to catch the Green River Killer, a case that elevated his political career. In the piece, they heavily imply that he deserves credit for the arrest of Gary Ridgway. The story’s image features a collage with two photos of Reichert next to Ridgway’s mug shot. The following lines, emphasis mine, suggest that he was integral to the case: “It wasn’t until science caught up, when Reichert was sheriff, that the state crime lab was able to incriminate Ridgway….But those policing tools, painstaking and exhausting, teed up the scientific discovery.”
While Reichert did reopen the case when he became sheriff, his supervisor told the Seattle PI that the noted homophobe and transphobe “was more of an impediment to the investigation,” as The Stranger reminded readers back in 2010. According to his supervisor, Reichert’s police work was shoddy, and his obsession with a different suspect took up valuable time and resources, and it almost bungled the case:
Not only did Reichert not catch Ridgeway—he tried to talk other detectives out of obtaining the warrant that got them the saliva swabs that ultimately convicted him. pic.twitter.com/C0FCPpG1mB
— DivestSPD (@DivestSPD) October 23, 2024
KUOW’s reporting mentions Reichert’s obsession with the wrong guy, but it effectively dismisses a six-part Seattle Times series about the investigation’s bad police work by handing Reichert the microphone so that he could basically say, YOU DON’T KNOW, YOU WEREN’T THERE. Nice work!
Another woman accuses Trump of groping: A former model named Stacey Williams says convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein walked her into Trump Tower in 1993 to meet Trump, who promptly “pulled her toward him and started groping her,” the Guardian reports. Williams said the two men shared a smile after the incident. Though she’d shared parts the story before, she delivered the details on a call with Survivors for Kamala, which supports the Harris campaign.
Harris admits the obvious: At a CNN town hall, someone asked Vice President Kamala Harris if Donald Trump fit the mold of a fascist, and she agreed. “A growing number of Trump’s former top aides” join her in this assessment, including former Chief of Staff John Kelly, according to the Washington Post. She went on to call him “increasingly unhinged and unstable,” and she warned (now I’m paraphrasing) that the so-called ‘adults in the room’ will not stand ready to smack the nuclear football out of his hands, making him more “dangerous” than ever.
Trump tells Hugh Hewitt this morning that he would fire Special Counsel Jack Smith “within two seconds” if he were re-elected
— Olivia Rinaldi (@olivialarinaldi) October 24, 2024
“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump exclaimed in 2020 during a private conversation at the White House, according to the Atlantic. The magazine also points to a passage in The Divider: Trump in the White House, which recounts a time when Trump asked his former chief of staff, John Kelly, why he couldn’t “be like the German generals.” Kelly reportedly said that “that German generals ‘tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.'” Trump replied, “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him.”
Despite the obvious: Nate Silver thinks Trump will win, but he also thinks you shouldn’t trust that bet. He argues Trump might over-perform the polls due to Dem losses in party identification and the “Bradley effect,” or, to update the term, the “Hillary Clinton” effect, where a lot of “undecided voters” are really just voters who don’t want to say they don’t want to vote for a woman president. On the other hand, he argues, pollsters could be making any number of errors, and marginal voters might not show up, which could hand Harris the victory. In the face of uncertainty, there’s only one answer: Vote. How? We got you covered.
Terror attack in Turkey: An attack at Turkey’s state-run aerospace company killed five people and injured 22, CNN reports. Videos showed an explosion and assailants carrying guns. Although a group has not claimed responsibility, Turkey’s defense minister blamed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the country hit PKK targets in Iraq and Syria.
The US and Canada sanction pro-Palestine prisoner group: Samidoun can no longer move money around to “raise awareness and provide resources about Palestinian political prisoners, their conditions, their demands, and their work for freedom for themselves, their fellow prisoners, and their homeland,” Al Jazeera reports. The countries say the group funds the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which both countries designate as a “terrorist group.”
TODAY: The US and Canada are attempting to repress Samidoun with sanctions and terrorist designations. Earlier, independent groups hosted a rally in solidarity with Samidoun, reaffirming the broader movement’s commitment to support more than 13,000 Palestinian prisoners. pic.twitter.com/xDSMzQZOQN
— Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) October 24, 2024
Don’t forget about the jab: People 65 and older and those who are immunocompromised should get a second dose of the latest COVID vaccine, the CDC says. (And the rest of us should get one, too.)
Arizona man arrested after shooting at Democratic Party office: No one was injured in the shooting at a Phoenix-area campaign office, but police say the 60-year-old man had more than 120 guns, 250,000 rounds, and a grenade launcher. They believe he was “preparing to commit an act of mass casualty,” the New York Times reports.
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