Our former cartoonist, Chris Britt (now with the State Journal Register in Springfield, Ill.), has a funny bit on YouTube about Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (UPDATE: Make that former Gov.).
Titled “Cocky,” it depicts a boxing match between “Blago” and Abe Lincoln. Check it out.
It’s hanging inside the entrance to the Pierce County annex on South 35th Street — where Pat McCarthy no longer works.
Photo of the photo taken Wednesday.
This editorial will appear in Thursday’s print edition.
Rail to Lakewood: Make it work – and look good
Sound Transit appears to be avoiding plans that would have done the most damage to Pacific Avenue traffic and the Dome District.
Sound Transit’s rail connection from the Tacoma Dome to Lakewood could have inflicted serious and lasting damage on downtown Tacoma. Now it looks as if the damage will be minimized – thanks to people who cared enough to do something about it.
Most of the 8.2-mile Dome-to-Lakewood route is uncontroversial: The Sounder trains will simply run on existing tracks. The potential for harm lay in the 1.2 miles of new tracks that are to link Tacoma Dome Station to freight tracks just past the Rescue Mission.
This editorial will appear in Thursday’s print edition.
A happy outcome for worker rights
A U.S. Supreme Court decision provides needed protection
for workers who cooperate with sexual harassment investigations.
One would think that federal law protected a person who cooperated with investigators looking into sexual harassment claims.
But one would have been wrong – until Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Incredibly, a federal appeals court had ruled that civil rights law protected the person who brought the sexual harassment claim – but not a co-worker who provides information supporting the claim.
Today’s report that Russell Investments is cutting its global workforce by 20 percent – with perhaps 200 jobs disappearing in Tacoma – is a double whammy.
It’s not only a loss of payroll for the community. Local nonprofit groups accustomed to generous grant support from Russell will suffer, too.
Unannounced, but certainly no secret, is the company’s decision to drastically curtail its charitable contributions. The company will refocus its charitable giving on “financial literacy” efforts.
In “decline” letters that went out recently to local non-profits seeking grants, Julia Garnett, the company’s corporate giving manager, explained:
The City of Tacoma has done a good job working with Sound Transit to minimize a new rail line’s damage to the Dome District and Pacific Avenue traffic.
The U.S. Supreme Court made the right call in a case involving a woman fired after answering questions in a sexual harassment investigation. It ruled that she should be protected against retaliation, even though she isn’t the one who brought the lawsuit.
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune’s editorial board.
In his Washington Post blog, Comic Riffs, Michael Cavna writes that he’s noticed something about political cartoonists who depict President Barack Obama: many are “bizarrely obsessed” with his lips. He writes:
…For every Steve Benson or Mike Luckovich who is zeroing in on a swell, spot-on Obama, there seems to be a cartoonist who invokes "caricature" in the most grotesque sense of the word. Obama’s lips have been rendered in such unnatural tints, and at such dimensions, that somewhere, even R. Crumb would blush. And of course, this physical area of
Watching the global economic climate we had to know it was coming.
Today Russell Investments announced it will cut twenty percent of its workforce in the coming year. Obviously as the city’s largest employer this is going to hurt. Those being let go will feel the brunt of it, but we as a community will suffer, too.
Having Russell in Tacoma is a source of pride, and when in better times their growth caused them to look for a larger home, the city took a collective breath and held it.