Most students in Washington State are vaccinated, but rates are falling among kindergarteners, reflective of a nationwide trend. This year, 90.3 percent of the state’s K-12 students met all vaccination requirements. Kindergarteners lagged 3.8 percent behind at 86.5 percent. Whereas overall vaccination rates increased by 0.6 percent over last year, vaccination rates for Kindergarteners fell by 0.6 percent. It makes some sense that we’d see the effects of years of anti-vax bullshit in families with the youngest children. State vaccine teams are keeping a particularly close eye on measles-mumps-rubella shots. Once eliminated domestically, measles clusters are erupting all over the country. This American Life had a great story about how the town of Vernal, Utah ended its outbreak in six weeks.
Driven by budget pressures—and the Legislature consistently underfunding education—schools across Washington State are starting the fall semester with fewer staff and teachers. We’re facing a budget shortfall, so this problem will likely worsen.
Unions are spending big to save the Millionaires Tax from the likes of Brian Heywood & Co. for the simple reason that this state fucking needs money for the public sector and graduated income taxes are unconstitutional. For now. We over rely on sales tax and fund every little thing with a property tax levy. “We think it’s entirely reasonable to ask the wealthiest among us to pay a little bit more,” said Adam Glickman, SEIU 775 secretary-treasurer, who told the Seattle Times union caregivers pay 16 percent of their $22 an hour income on taxes, while the state’s richest people pay only three percent.
As President Donald Trump runs toward the sensual, robotic arms of AI companies, his base is backing away, WIRED reports. More than 60 percent of Americans, and 47 percent of Republicans, oppose data center construction; in August, “the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a private memo to AI companies sounding the alarm on how voters perceive data centers, warning that ‘campaign or party committees can not fix the toxic brand of an entire segment of the economy.’” Last week, GOP strategist Tony Fabrizio told party candidates in a memo that “unqualified support” for data centers is a “losing position.”
President Trump, man of the people, voice of the voiceless, overclass hero, wrote on Truth Social in August that “only the backwards and poor” would oppose data centers in their town, and he hasn’t shut up about it since. The thousands of negative comments left on a pro-AI post he made on his own platform last week outnumbered positive comments four to one, a New York Times analysis found. In Trump’s increasingly vacant eyes, backing off AI only means losing to China.
CNN, MS Now, and Politico are suing over the White House access they were stripped of on Saturday because of “fake news.” The networks are expected to file the lawsuit later this morning, and the White House had no comment. Trump did, on Truth Social: “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish,” the president said in his totally believable post post. “It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”
What a surprise, Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party is dominating the vote in the first tightly controlled parliamentary election since starting a war in Ukraine (most antiwar candidates have been barred from the ballot). The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, New People, A Just Russia, whose members vote with United Russia most of the time, are also expected to pick up seats.
More than 120,000 Yemenis have been displaced by fighting on the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia, which backs the UN-recognized government of Yemen that does not control the capital, Sana’a, or the vast majority of the country’s population, is using drones and missiles to strike the flat coastal plains where the Houthi “rebels” are digging in, the BBC reports.
What comes up must come down: The orange-and-white crane that towered 500 feet above the Big Pasco Industrial Center in the Tri-Cities for the last 15 years is being dismantled and sent to Japan to construct nuclear power plants. The crane’s Japanese owner ordered the crane from maker Lampson International 20 years ago, but the crane stayed in Pasco because Japan paused its nuclear program after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant disaster in Fukushima. Now that the country’s nuclear age has resumed, the crane will spend seven years building the Higashidori Nuclear Power Station for Tokyo Electric in the northern Aomori Prefecture.
Weather: Mostly cloudy, then sunny. Tomorrow, on the first day of fall, there’s a 20 percent chance of rain. I feel the chill returning.
