Seattle Post-Times

Boeing's dumb flight plan

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Here's longtime Boeing watcher and author T.M. Sell, writing for Crosscut, summing up the decision to open a second 787 production line in North Charleston:

So here's the problem with moving to South Carolina, now. Having essentially junked the careful, collaborative process that made the 777 such a success, Boeing has collected a fleet of trouble trying to sort out the problems of the even-more complicated 787. So the answer is opening up a second production line for a jet that still isn’t ready to fly? And staffing it with new hires? In a state where you’ve already had considerable production problems, problems so bad, your evil, unionized Washington workers have had to fix them? ...

... They’re about to spend around $900 million to save $9 million a year in labor costs.

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• Learning the right lessons from the Boeing calamity (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

The people convict KIRO-TV

A belated update: As I noted previously, the non-profit, non-governmental Washington News Council decided to take its media-accountability thing to the people, instead of holding a hearing, in the unofficial case of the Secretary of State of Washington v. KIRO-TV in Seattle. Secretary of State Sam Reed had filed a complaint [PDF] with the organization, seeking a public redress of grievances over a KIRO report regarding supposedly illegally registered voters in the 2008 election.

In the complaint, Reed said KIRO reporter Chris Halsne's investigative series on voter registration "fell far short of the most basic standards of journalism for accuracy, balance and fairness. This occurred despite our repeated efforts to correct some of his assumptions and methodology and errors before he aired his reports."

Well, the people weighed in, voting overwhelmingly to "convict" KIRO and Halsne of eight counts of wreckless journalism and disregard of the facts. The citizens then posted comments about how badly the station and the reporter botched the reports, clips of which [#1, #2] they viewed in addition to reading the secretary of state's complaint.

Fun facts to know and tell

From this article:

• State estimate of unemployed in the city of Seattle: 91,400. City population: 594,210. (Percentage of city population unemployed: 15.4 percent.)
• Washington unemployment rate: 7.1 percent. National: 7.2 percent. State unemployment total: 251,700.
• Washington's maximum weekly unemployment benefit: $541. National rank: 8th. Highest: Massachusetts, at $900 per week.

The Legislature is considering a bill that would increase the weekly benefit (which is determined by how much you were being paid during the year before you were laid off), and also reducing the employment security insurance premium paid by businesses — a move advocated by the governor as a double stimulus.

Unemployment benefits are subject to federal income tax. If Congress wanted to help even more, it would yank that rule. For me, it would mean an additional $54.10 a week, which is what the state is withholding from my weekly check.

Related: "It's all hands on deck at jobless call center"

Update: U.S. unemployment was 7.6 percent in January

Made with a Mac

Radical modernists of the Republican Party are planning to copy everything Barack Obama did, and apparently they plan to use a Macintosh by Apple, on whose board of directors sits Al Gore.