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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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While the COVID pandemic and tax policies are making the headlines from Olympia, farmers and farmworkers have their focus trained on an issue that could devastate Washington’s agricultural economy. A recent state Supreme Court ruling known as the DeRuyter Brothers case did away with a 60-year-old law exempting dairy workers from overtime pay in Washington state. However, this ruling was silent on the issue of back pay and offered no relief or guidance for seasonal or harvest workers. What has filled that vacuum is a bevy of staggering legal suits seeking three years of retroactive overtime back pay claims from farmers across Washington state. These issues are now casting a long and dangerous shadow over small to mid-size farms. Our state’s agricultural economy needs the legislature to take swift and decisive action to stop this legal onslaught and find a solution that honors farmers and their workers. To their credit, the Washington state Senate recently passed a bill setting forth a framework for transitioning to overtime hours in the future and providing a “Safe Harbor” to eliminate any obligation related to pay back overtime wages. While “safe harbor” from retroactive back pay claims comes as a welcome development, the bill must also address overtime relief policies for seasonal and harvest workers to fully protect family farms and their workers.
Local bars and halls run by VFW and American Legion posts – those community staples where vets commiserate over beers and people celebrate weddings and other milestones – were already struggling when the pandemic hit. After years of declining membership, restrictions meant to slow the spread of COVID-19 became a death blow for many.
Iran has made threats against Fort McNair, an Army base in the nation’s capital, and against the Army’s vice chief of staff, two senior U.S. intelligence officials said. ... The intelligence also revealed threats to kill Gen. Joseph M. Martin and plans to infiltrate and surveil the base, according to the officials, who were not authorized to publicly discuss national security matters and spoke on condition of anonymity. The base, one of the oldest in the country, is Martin’s official residence.
There’s nothing that ails Joe Biden’s agenda, we are supposed to believe, that ending the filibuster wouldn’t fix. President Joe Biden showed a little leg on changing the filibuster in an ABC News interview, while almost every Senate Democrat wants to ditch it. Even Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who still supports the filibuster, said a couple of weeks ago that resorting to it should be more “painful.” Senate Democrats probably remain a few votes shy of really being able to trash the filibuster, which would require the support of every Democrat (plus Vice President Kamala Harris as the 51st vote), but they are steadily talking themselves into curtailing or abolishing the filibuster as a political and moral necessity. This would be a mistake, both for the institution of the Senate and for the narrow partisan interests of the Democrats.
He blazed through my childhood like a sombrero-clad comet, terrorizing gringo villains in the name of us downtrodden Mexicans. His war cry went straight from our televisions and movie screens into our hearts and minds. My family and so many others cheered on his exploits, imagining ourselves as soldiers in his brigade. Polite society told us we shouldn’t worship this bad hombre because he made Mexicans look bad. So they tried everything possible to dim his star – but we Mexicans always fought loudly against any attempts to cancel our compadre. Pancho Villa? Emiliano Zapata? Vicente Fernandez? Try Speedy Gonzales.
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