Podcasts about qfc

Be a part of something bigger than yourself - help with local families having food insecurity right now.You can bring non perishable food items directly to your local Les Schwab location, buy a virtual bag of groceries at your local QFC, or donate online at https://foodlifeline.org/kiro7cares

CBS Margaret Brennan on Middle East + Trump legislation // Charlie Harger with QFC and Fred Meyer on Superbowl snacks // CBS Thane Rosenbaum on birthright citizenship // Matt Markovich legislative update // Herb Weisbaum on buying flowers for Valentines Day // Gee Scott on the best Superbowl snacks for your party // Paul Holden weekend feature

Last week, plans for the largest U.S. supermarket merger in history imploded in spectacular fashion. First, an Oregon federal judge blocked the $24.6 billion bid by Kroger to take over Albertson's, its next largest rival. Less than 24 hours later, Albertsons, which also owns Safeway, pulled out of the deal entirely — and then filed a massive lawsuit against Kroger, the parent company of Fred Meyer and QFC. The bitter breakup marks the end of a two-year saga that stood to upend grocery shopping across Oregon and centered largely right here in Portland. On the latest Beat Check, Oregonian/OregonLive reporters Kristine de Leon and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh unpack the final twists and turns of the supermarket deal gone sour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3pm: Holiday Magic Total as of Thursday: $86,400! // What Walmart may gain from FTC's Kroger-Albertsons lawsuit // The great grocery merger is dead. Can Albertsons, QFC and others survive? // WSDOT wants more Anti-Graffiti drones // University of Illinois’s “Dial-A-Carol” Hotline is Live for 2024 carrying on their tradition started in 1960! // Grandma is literally run over by a reindeer // The girl with 1000 letters in her name

6pm: Holiday Magic Total as of Thursday: $86,400! // What Walmart may gain from FTC's Kroger-Albertsons lawsuit // The great grocery merger is dead. Can Albertsons, QFC and others survive? // WSDOT wants more Anti-Graffiti drones // University of Illinois’s “Dial-A-Carol” Hotline is Live for 2024 carrying on their tradition started in 1960! // Grandma is literally run over by a reindeer // The girl with 1000 letters in her name

Holiday Hunger Food Drive, QFC has teamed up with Food Lifeline to End HUNGER.Tiffany Sanders Corporate affairs Manager with QFC and Ryan Scott Director of Food Lifeline talk about their dream to end hunger. Together they are addressing food insecurity in our community. Working together they are not only filling in the gaps but providing more bang for the donations. This is your chance to help your community by rounding up at the register or purchasing a 10 dollar virtual bag of food for Food Lifeline.Food Lifeline Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Holiday Hunger Food Drive, QFC has teamed up with Food Lifeline to End HUNGER. Tiffany Sanders Corporate affairs Manager with QFC and Ryan Scott Director of Food Lifeline talk about their dream to end hunger. Together they are addressing food insecurity in our community. Working together they are not only filling in the gaps but providing more bang for the donations. This is your chance to help your community by rounding up at the register or purchasing a 10 dollar virtual bag of food for Food Lifeline. Food Lifeline Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ryan Scott, Chief Development Officer with Food Lifeline, and Tiffany Sanders, Corporate Affairs Manager with QFC, join us to discuss their collaboration in support of our community members dealing with food insecurity, particularly during this holiday season. The need is great - 1 in 4 persons in Washington are food insecure. With each of us doing just a little, we can help make this holiday a memorable for all of us. For as little as $10, you can purchase a virtual bag of food when you check out your purchases at QFC.https://foodlifeline.org/qfc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan Scott, Chief Development Officer with Food Lifeline, and Tiffany Sanders, Corporate Affairs Manager with QFC, join us to discuss their collaboration in support of our community members dealing with food insecurity, particularly during this holiday season. The need is great - 1 in 4 persons in Washington are food insecure. With each of us doing just a little, we can help make this holiday a memorable for all of us. For as little as $10, you can purchase a virtual bag of food when you check out your purchases at QFC. https://foodlifeline.org/qfc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Monday, a judge at the U.S. District Court of Oregon in Portland will hear arguments to temporarily block the proposed merger of Kroger and Albertsons grocery chains. The nearly $25 billion deal, which was announced nearly two years ago, would create the largest supermarket chain in U.S. history, with roughly 5,000 stores and 700,000 employees across 48 states. Kroger owns Fred Meyer and QFC grocery stores in the Northwest, and Albertsons owns Safeway.  In February, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the merger, claiming it would hurt workers, stifle competition and raise prices for consumers. Executives at Kroger and Albertsons dispute those claims, saying the merger will result in lower prices and more choices for consumers, and result in no layoffs of “frontline workers.”  On Capitol Hill, opposition to the merger is being led by Oregon’s senior Democratic Senator, Ron Wyden, and Washington’s U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-07). Sen. Wyden joins us to share his perspective on the proposed merger, the presidential election and other issues. 

30th July: Crypto & Coffee at 8

Fifteen QFC and Safeway stores in Seattle could soon be under new management thanks to a proposed merger between Safeway parent company Albertsons and Kroger, which owns QFC. The announcement sparked plenty of questions about what would happen to the stores, if any would close, and what changes customers could see.  Seattle Times business reporter Paul Roberts is here to get into the details with us. We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. You have the power! Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/donate/seattlenow And we want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram at SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedback See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

201. Ficks Beverage | Ron Alvarado co-founded Ficks Beverage Co, the leading manufacturer of better-for-you bar products with its line of pure fruit juice hard seltzers and wellness-focused cocktail mixers. They are based in San Francisco, California, and currently expanding their two main products to national retailers such as Whole Foods, H-E-B, Target, QFC, BevMo, and Safeway. Ron and his co-founder, Mike, have been perfecting their craft since their college days, experimenting and brewing in their small studio apartment. They were obsessed with the challenge of creating the best tasting drinks solely using all-natural ingredients.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, Resources Mentioned, & the Fabulous 4 Questions on this episode visit our website: Ron Alvarado Interview. ***   If you have land in Alabama, then check out: https://bubba-land.com/alabama/  

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank! Crystal and Robert dive into the open machinations of the big corporate donors to appoint their preferred candidate to a Seattle City Council vacancy and how the messy process has leached its way into Seattle School Board politics. They then discuss the qualification of a right-wing initiative to dismantle the state's plan to take on the climate crisis. Robert gives a rare kudos to The Seattle Times for their presentation of a debate over homeless encampments, they both are dismayed at the depressing and infuriating news that the Tacoma officers in the Manuel Ellis case are getting paid $500k each to voluntarily leave the police department, and the show rounds out with analysis of some media's treatment of AG Ferguson's lawsuit to block a merger between Kroger and Albertsons. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.   Resources RE-AIR: The Big Waterfront Bamboozle with Mike McGinn and Robert Cruickshank from Hacks & Wonks   “Harrell Administration Consultant Tim Ceis Urges Businesses to Back Tanya Woo for Open Council Seat” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   “Business, labor lobby for open seat on Seattle City Council” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times   “Seattle City Council candidate has residency conflict in School Board role” by Claire Bryan from The Seattle Times    “Initiative 2117 (repealing Washington's Climate Commitment Act) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “‘Should Seattle remove encampments?' Advocates debate” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times   “Tacoma cops acquitted in death of Manuel Ellis will get $500K each to resign, city says” by Peter Talbot from The News Tribune    “Kroger-Albertsons merger would hike grocery prices, create near monopolies in some Washington communities, AG says” by Helen Smith from KING 5   “WA suit to block Kroger-Albertsons merger gets cheers, raised eyebrows” by Paul Roberts from The Seattle Times   Find stories that Crystal is reading here   Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy walks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, one of our audience favorites, and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. [00:01:12] Robert Cruickshank: Hey - thanks for having me on again, Crystal. [00:01:14] Crystal Fincher: Hey, excited to have you on again - here in 2024. Well, we've got a lot to talk about - things are getting spicy in the City of Seattle, with regards to this upcoming Seattle City Council appointment to replace Teresa Mosqueda's seat. Because Teresa was elected to the King County Council, which created a vacancy - so now it needs to be filled. So what happened this week? [00:01:38] Robert Cruickshank: Well, I think a lot has happened with the machinations around this appointment process - and in fact, things we're learning about how the new regime at City Hall is conducting itself - and they come together. I think this is basically Tim Ceis - who is former deputy mayor to Greg Nickels back in the 2000s, corporate lobbyist, close to established power in Seattle - and Council President Sara Nelson, who, of course, just became council president after the new council with a bunch of her allies got sworn in at the beginning of the month. They seem to be conducting a purge of anyone progressive in the City Hall, in City staff, and are determined to consolidate power around what is actually, I think, a fairly radical agenda for the city that most voters didn't really actually select, especially when it comes to cutting taxes for big businesses and slashing public services. But in order to try to achieve that, they know that they need to try to push out and keep out anyone who might disagree, anyone who might even be remotely progressive on anything. I think it's a pretty significant misreading of the results of recent elections in Seattle - their candidates won often narrowly on questions of public safety, not on cutting taxes for big businesses. In fact, most of their candidates hedged on the questions of taxes when they were asked during the campaigns. But I think you see a real desire to consolidate power around a small group of loyalists, no dissent allowed. And this is a approach to governance that I don't think Seattleites expect or want. I mean, most people in Seattle assume and want a fairly technocratic, go-along-to-get-along government where everyone is sort of driven by data, gets along with each other, and try to do things in the public interest. Now, you and I, a lot of our listeners, know that's not really how the city operates. But what we're seeing now is, I think, a much more aggressive and - in some ways, unprecedented for Seattle - attempt to impose a radical agenda on the city from the right. [00:03:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this isn't what voters thought they were signing up for. This isn't what anyone campaigned on. Voters are looking at what the candidates are saying, they're looking at the mail, the commercials - again, definitely talked about public safety, talked about homelessness. But what we saw in Sara Nelson's first statement was austerity - we're cutting taxes for business. But voters didn't weigh in on this at all. And I don't think people are going to have a great reaction to this. [00:03:55] Robert Cruickshank: When Seattle voters weigh in on questions of taxes, Seattleites pass almost every tax put in front of them. When it comes to state ballot initiatives to tax the rich - they might fail statewide as they did in 2010, but they pass with wide support in Seattle. When it comes to money in politics, Seattleites approved taxing themselves - raising their property taxes slightly - to create the Democracy Voucher program. This is a city that does not want corporate money in politics and yet, that is exactly what's happened here. The reason we're talking about all this right now is not just because there's a council appointment, but because Tim Ceis, this aforementioned corporate lobbyist, sent out an email at the beginning of the week urging all of the people - whether they're wealthy individuals or from big corporations - who donated to the independent expenditure campaigns to help get a lot of these councilmembers elected last year, telling them - Hey, we need you to mobilize right now to stop Vivian Song, who is currently on the Seattle School Board, who's seeking the appointment - Ceis says, We got to stop her. She held a fundraiser for Teresa Mosqueda. She endorsed Ron Davis. She's friendly to unions. And gosh, we can't have that on our council. And the way Ceis put it was to basically act as if these wealthy interests had bought the council. They now own the council - it is theirs, not ours. Not ours in the sense of "we the people." And they can do whatever they want with it. So Ceis' attitude - and I think Sara Nelson shares this - is that it's theirs now, nobody else can tell them what to do with the city council. They have the absolute right to pick whoever they want to and impose this agenda on the city. I think both that attitude and a policy agenda they want are not what the city wants at all, and they are going to run into a big backlash real fast. [00:05:30] Crystal Fincher: Real fast. And the brazenness with which he stated this was wild. This is from the email that Tim Ceis sent - "While it's been a great two weeks watching the outcome of our effort as the new City Council has taken office, the independent expenditure success earned you the right to let the Council know not to offer the left the consolation prize of this Council seat." Okay, they're just admitting that they bought this seat. They're just admitting that - Hey, yeah, it was our effort that got these people onto the council. And we spent a million dollars plus in this independent expenditure effort and that gives us the right - he said the "right" - to tell the council what to do, which I don't recall seeing something this overtly stated before. [00:06:17] Robert Cruickshank: There's an important contrast we can draw - both Bruce Harrell and Eric Adams, mayor of New York, were elected in 2021. And at the time, Eric Adams was hailed as some sort of future of the Democratic Party - center right, tough on crime, pushing back against progressives. Well, here we are at the beginning of 2024 - Eric Adams has a 28% approval rating in New York - highly unlikely to win a re-election at this point. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of the primary reasons is cuts to public services - libraries, schools, parks, all sorts of things. And the public is just clearly rejecting that. Bruce Harrell is up for re-election next year. And I think Harrell's going to have to decide for himself - does he want to be the one to get all the blame for this? Or maybe he just thinks Sara Nelson takes all the blame. Who knows? Maybe there's a good cop, bad cop approach being planned here - with Sara Nelson being the bad cop pushing austerity and Harrell's try to be the good cop, try to bring everybody together. Who knows? But I think what you see in New York is what you're going to see in Seattle - a significant backlash. I also want to mention - you quoted Ceis' letter talking about giving a prize to the left. Vivian Song is not a leftist. This is the part that just blows my mind about all this. She's as mainstream a Seattle Democrat as it gets. If you read her application letter for the council appointment, she talks about hiring more cops, being careful with city spending. She's honestly probably a little bit to the right of most of the previous city council that just got voted out. But to Ceis and Nelson, she's unacceptable because she's friendly with unions, was friendly with some progressives - what that shows me is that they only want extremists like themselves or who will just do their own bidding. And I think they're setting themselves up for a significant backlash. [00:07:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and the final point - in looking at this, there were so many applicants to this - all across the spectrum, right? There weren't just progressive applicants for the seat. There were dozens and dozens of people from across the spectrum - and good choices - people who had experience, who have the right intentions from across the spectrum. This isn't about - Well, we just don't want an extreme leftist from these corporate interests. This is about - You're going to pick our person. Because there are several other choices on there - they're talking about Tanya Woo. Why aren't they talking about Phil Tavel, right? Why aren't they talking about anyone else that seems to align with their interests? They want loyalists - that's the bottom line. It goes beyond what the ideology is. It's - are you going to be loyal to me? Are you going to back me on what I'm doing? And without that assurance - We're not backing you. With that assurance, you're in and we're going to fight. And hey, we spent a million plus to get these other folks in. Now we're using our muscle to get you in too. And we're telling people - Hey, this was our show. We elected these people. It was our effort and that gives us the right to dictate what's going to happen. When you have the primary concern, the primary litmus test being loyalty and not is this going to help the residents of the city? Do they have experience? Can they credibly lead and do this? Wow, we get into a lot of trouble if it's just - Are you going to back me? Are you not going to question anything I'm doing? Are you going to rubber stamp this? So this appointment process is really going to be an opportunity to see where the loyalties lie. Are they serving their constituents or are they serving the business community? Because again, there are lots of picks if they wanted to go with a conservative person, right? I think they probably will. But the point is, it's got to be the one handpicked by business. This is going to tell us a lot about where the heads of these new councilmembers are at. Yeah, it [00:09:49] Robert Cruickshank: will. And I think it's also setting up 2024 - not just in terms of the policy discussions we'll see in City Hall, but the campaigns. This seat that gets filled in this appointment process later this month will be on the November 2024 ballot citywide. And I think Tanya Woo would likely run for that seat if she's appointed to it. If so, then she's going to have to go to voters - not as someone picked for her qualifications, at least in the way the public will see it. The public will see it as - she was picked by business because she's loyal to business. Vivian Song may want to run for that seat too - last night got endorsed by the King County Labor Council to hold that appointment. It sets up a very interesting - not just 10 days between now and when this appointment gets made, but 10 months between now and the November election, where I think you're going to see real contests over the future of the city. [00:10:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Another interesting dimension with this about Vivian Song is about her residency and her existing Seattle School Board position. What's going on here? [00:10:45] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, so we'll go back to 2021 - where there was an article that appeared in The Stranger when Vivian was running for the school board, questioning her residency - that she had changed residencies and changed voter registration - and questioning whether she was eligible to run for the District 4 seat for the school board. Now, the school board districts don't line up exactly with the city council districts, so listeners should keep that in mind - but Vivian won, won citywide. Because in school board, you are first elected out of the primary in just the district. Then the top two from that district go on to a citywide election in the school board. So Vivian won citywide in 2021. Last summer, it emerges that some of her critics and opponents on school board were questioning where she lives now - that she might not actually live in the district she technically represents. This is brought to the school board legal department, which looked at it and did not see a need to kick her off the school board, or declare her seat vacant and force an election. People move around for personal reasons, and they don't have to be told to tell those personal reasons in public. But Vivian is not someone who is manipulating the system for political gain - there are legitimate reasons she was moving. And yet this comes out in a Seattle Times article this week and gets mentioned at a board meeting last night - the only board meeting during this entire council appointment process. This has been under discussion behind the scenes at the school district for months. But why does it emerge now? I think it's the obvious reason why it emerges now - because some of Vivian's critics on the school board, whether they're working directly with Tim Ceis and Sara Nelson or not, are certainly helping Tim Ceis and Sara Nelson try to torpedo Vivian Song's candidacy. Now, from a progressive perspective, this doesn't necessarily mean that Vivian's the right pick for the appointment process. We should take a look at everybody. But I think the relentless efforts to destroy her, both in her position on the school board and to keep her out of the city council, suggest to me some real problems with the way both the city council and the school board are now being governed by small little cliques determined to hold on to their own power, to push austerity, unfriendly to labor, and hostile to public input. I think it's a really shocking and disturbing development that we're seeing in our city. Away from small-d democratic governance. I think everyone in the city should be really concerned about these developments. [00:13:05] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. And statewide news - big news - it's going to impact our November 2024 ballot. The second right-wing initiative qualified for the 2024 ballot. What does this do and what does this mean? [00:13:21] Robert Cruickshank: So background here is that the far right chair of the state Republican Party, State Representative Jim Walsh - hardcore MAGA Trump guy - became State Party Chair last year and is working with a wealthy mega-donor, a guy named Brian Heywood, to try to repeal the main accomplishments of the Democratic majority in the legislature of the last few years. So we've got six initiatives so far that they've submitted to the state to qualify - two of them have made it to the ballot. One of them you just mentioned, which will be Initiative 2117 to try to destroy our state's climate action plan. They want to repeal the carbon pricing piece of it - sometimes known as cap and trade, cap and invest, whatever you want to call it. Their argument is - Oh, it's why gas prices are so high in Washington state. Well, no. One, we on the West Coast have always had higher gas prices than the rest of the country. And in fact, the reason Washington has high gas prices is because of King County. I did an analysis a few weeks ago that shows - if you cross the river from Portland to Vancouver, Washington, the average cost of gas is the same. If you are in Tacoma, you're paying less than you pay in Portland, Oregon. So if carbon pricing was causing gas prices to soar across Washington state, you'd see it everywhere - but you don't. What that suggests to me is you might actually be seeing oil companies gouging King County - that's worth investigation, which the oil companies don't want. But point being - Jim Walsh, who's a Trump guy, Brian Heywood, who's the wealthy funder, want to destroy our ability to tackle the climate crisis. They want to destroy our ability to fund the things that are needed to help people get off of fossil fuel. And so they're putting this on the ballot. They're going to put some other initiatives on the ballot to try to repeal our capital gains tax on the rich, that funds schools and early learning. And this is going to be one of the big battles that we're seeing this year - an effort to impose, again, a far-right agenda on the state of Washington. And I think that progressive organizations, the State Democratic Party are maybe a little slow to respond to this - I think they will engage, but now's the time to start letting people know what's happening here, what this attack is, how dangerous it could be, and the importance of stopping all six of these initiatives. [00:15:30] Crystal Fincher: We've seen Republicans have an increasingly hard time winning statewide and legislatively over the past few years - they've lost power, they tried the courts. The Supreme Court actually just rejected a case trying to come to the Supreme Court about the capital gains tax. So this is their only recourse now. And unfortunately, because of the way our political system is, money gets you really far. And so if you have these multi-hundred millionaires, these billionaires who come in and say - You know what, this is what I want - they're able to basically make us go through this whole charade. And so we have to fight against it. It's here. We have to do this. But it really is important to talk to people about - not to fall for these cheap lines that, Oh, this is another gas tax. It's the hidden gas tax, as they say. But we've had this price gouging conversation before - I think more people are seeing it, which is encouraging. But we're going to have to go through this whole campaign. [00:16:29] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and I think that it's worth noting there are reasonable discussions to be had about how to do carbon pricing right and what it should fund. And there were very intense conversations and disagreements about that when this was passed in 2021. And I think it makes sense to take a look and say - Okay, how do we make sure we're doing this right? That's not what this initiative does. This initiative uses voter concern about gas prices to totally destroy our ability to tackle the climate crisis. This is coming from people who don't believe the climate crisis is real. Or if they do believe it's real, they don't really want to do anything to stop it because they think driving and keeping oil companies happy is more important. We see wild weather all across the region - we remember that super hot heat wave from the summer of 2021, we remember the long droughts of 2022 - this is not a time to mess around. If we want to look at how to address needs to ensure that carbon pricing works - great. If we want to take a look at what it's funding - great. But to totally destroy the system entirely because a bunch of right-wingers and wealthy donors want it, I think, is a disaster. [00:17:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolute disaster. I was certainly one of those people who had criticisms of the Climate Commitment Act. There are certainly tweaks that should be made. There are some better ways that we can go about some of these processes. But the option isn't - do nothing. That's unacceptable. It isn't just dismantle and repeal everything. Just like with Social Security, just like with Medicare - these big, important pieces of legislation - that do come with benefits. We're going to have to tweak them. We're going to have to get information back, get data back, and respond to that with some technical fixes, some tweaks to make sure that we steer it onto the best path that it can be. But wow, we cannot afford to do nothing. We can't afford to dismantle this at this point in time. This is one of the most hopeful opportunities we have - really in the country - to show how states can lead and come together to get this done. We can't dismantle this at this point in time. Also want to talk about a debate that we saw, on the pages of The Seattle Times, among homeless advocates that reflects a lot of the conversation going on in communities about how to handle encampments. What was talked about here and what's important to understand? [00:18:42] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I want to do something I don't always do, which is give credit to The Seattle Times for hosting this discussion. I think it was a really good way to do it - between two people - Tim Harris, who used to be the executive editor of Real Change, and Tiffani McCoy, a leader in the Initiative 135 House Our Neighbors Now social housing effort here in Seattle. These are two progressive people who have long records of advocacy for housing and for the needs of the homeless. So they didn't do the usual thing that media will do - is pit a progressive against some crazy right winger. These are two people, who I think come at this with the right intentions and the right values. And they both made some pretty good points about how we handle this issue of sweeps and encampments. Sweeps - I believe they're awful. They're also popular. The public likes them. We saw the 2017 mayoral race, we saw in 2021 mayoral and city council races, city attorney race. We saw it last year in the city council races. Candidates who back sweeps almost always defeat candidates who oppose them - we're getting nowhere, and the people who are living in these encampments aren't getting help. Now, this doesn't mean we should embrace sweeps. And I thought that Tiffani McCoy did a really good job of laying out, again, the damage that sweeps do to not just the possessions of people who are living in tents, but to their own psychological state. And it often makes it harder for them to escape addiction, harder for them to find stability they need to get a home. I thought Tim Harris, though, made some good points about the problems that happen if you leave an encampment in place - how drug dealers eventually find it. And even the best managed encampments - it just takes one or two people with bad intentions to show up and the whole place kind of falls apart into violence. So leaving an encampment out there doesn't help the people who are living there, especially now we're in the extremely cold winter season. But what happens is, too often, this gets framed as a discussion between - do we sweep or do we leave encampments indefinitely? And when that's the terms of the discussion, sweeps will win every single time. And we've seen that for years now. And I think progressives need to realize that that's the case. We are not going to stop sweeps by trying to argue against sweeps alone, and to argue essentially for leaving encampments indefinitely. We have to get out of that binary that we're losing and the people in those encampments are losing. And I think the only way out is to go to the solution, right? We need to build housing for people immediately. Bruce Harrell took office on a promise to build 2,000 units of housing for folks - homes, shelter, tiny homes, whatever - to get people out. Did that happen? Where did that go? You know, there are some tiny home villages that are out there. They do a great job. But why aren't we massively expanding those? Where are the safe RV sites? Where are other forms of shelter? Where's the permanent supportive housing that we need? Where are the new SROs that we need? I think that's where progressive energy needs to focus - is on getting people out of tents now - into real housing with a roof, with a door that locks that they like, where they can bring all their possessions, including their dog and their partner. And I think that's where the emphasis needs to go. I think if we get stuck in this sweeps versus indefinite encampments, we're just going to keep losing. The people who need help aren't going to get it. And so I thought that this debate that The Times hosted did a good job of really laying out why we need to go in that direction. [00:21:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I think this is another area where - just the classic communications issue - you can't just argue against something. You have to argue for the vision that you want - because it doesn't translate - what people do here is exactly what you said. Well, okay - if we aren't going to sweep, then they're going to just stay there and that's unacceptable too. And it's unacceptable to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons, right? Some people are those crazy right wingers who just, you know - Get them out of my sight type of thing. But there are people who are saying - We need to get these people into a better place. We have lethal cold in the winter. We have lethal heat in the summer. We have public safety concerns. People who are unhoused, who are in these encampments, are more likely to be victims of crime than just about anyone else. This is a hazard to their health, to everyone's health. This is a big challenge. We need to get them into housing. We need more shelter options. We can't have this conversation while we know there isn't the infrastructure to get everyone indoors. Until we have that infrastructure, what are we talking about? We have to build. We have to build more transitional housing. We have to build more single residence occupancy, or those SROs. We have to move forward with housing. And I do believe in a Housing First approach. There's also this preemptive kind of argument that we're hearing from right wingers - Oh, we already tried that. Oh, we so have not tried that. We've never come close to trying that - on more than a trial with 20 people basis - that has never been a policy that the city has pursued overall. We have pursued these encampment sweeps and you can see they aren't getting us anywhere. The problem has actually gotten worse while we're doing this. So we have to make sure that we're speaking with unity and articulating what we want to see, what we're pursuing, what needs to get done. [00:23:50] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and I think there is another reason for urgency here. Sweeps, under rulings of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - federal - in the case against the City of Boise, Idaho, and a similar case against the City of Grants Pass, Oregon. The appeals court ruled that you cannot sweep an encampment without offering shelter to the people living there. A lot of cities, including San Francisco and others, have wanted to get out of that. They appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in the last few days. The Supreme Court has said - Yes, we will take up those cases. It is highly likely then, perhaps by this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court will say - You can sweep whenever you want to. You can eliminate an encampment without having to offer shelter at all. And I think a lot of advocates will point out that those offers of shelter, you know, are maybe a fig leaf at best. That fig leaf is going to go away very soon. So I think that just creates even more urgency to push really hard to get the city and the state to step up and provide housing, whether it's, you know, buying more hotels to get people out of tents or put up more tiny home villages. Whatever it takes, we have to do it, and we have to do it now because there is now an actual ticking clock at the U.S. Supreme Court on this. [00:24:57] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And you know what? I do want to recognize what Dow Constantine has been doing with leaning on this issue - with the buying the hotels, working in concert with different cities in the county, offering - even in the Burien debacle, it was really the county who provided the light at the end of the tunnel and real tangible assistance to actually deal with the issue and get people into housing. So, you know, more of that - more of what we've seen from Dow Constantine, more of focusing on getting people housed. Absolutely want to see it. And just absolutely dejecting news - where I wasn't shocked, but certainly dismayed. The Tacoma cops from the Manuel Ellis case are getting $500,000 to voluntarily leave the department. What are your thoughts on this? [00:25:47] Robert Cruickshank: I mean, it's unsurprising and appalling that they're getting half a million dollars after killing Manuel Ellis and getting away with it. I mean, getting away with it was bad enough - the way that the jury ruled in that case a few weeks back. Now they're literally getting money in their pocket after this - being waved goodbye. And I'm sure that this does not come with any stipulations that would make it difficult for them to get a new job anywhere else. I remember when McGinn was mayor in the early 2010s, the Ian Birk case. Ian Birk, the Seattle officer who shot and killed Native American woodcarver John T. Williams. Birk was not really prosecuted. There was an inquest. But Birk left the department, got a job somewhere else. Well, one of the things McGinn did was pursue legal remedies to make it impossible for Birk to get another job as an officer. I do not see any such thing happening here in the Tacoma case. These officers are getting a payday and getting away with it. But I think what this shows, yet again, is the importance of having real teeth in police accountability. And I think it also shows that the criminal justice system is not a substitute for that. We can't assume that the criminal justice system alone is going to hold cops accountable, as we saw in this case - yet again, it didn't. We need reforms at the state level to remove officer accountability from bargaining. We need to make it easier for cities to hold cops accountable who break the law, who commit murder, things like that. And that's where this needs to go, because what has happened here is injustice upon injustice upon injustice. And if this doesn't spur us to act, then what's going to? [00:27:32] Crystal Fincher: There's currently a federal review going on by the U.S. attorney for Western Washington. The family of Manny Ellis is calling for a consent decree for the City of Tacoma's police department with this. So those levers are turning. This issue to me is really - my goodness, this is not a pro-cop or an anti-cop thing, right? How do we hold people accountable who violate the standards that we set for them, who violate the standards that are already in place? This reminds me of what happened in the City of Kent with the assistant chief who had Nazi memorabilia, Hitler mustache, Nazi signs at work - and then got paid a ton, got rich to leave voluntarily. What are we doing when there's no mechanism to fire a Nazi in the workplace? For people who are absolutely in favor of more police, why are you tolerating this? That's my question. Why are we allowing this to fall into the - Well, either you love cops or you hate cops and you're evil if you want to do anything attached to accountability. What are we even doing? I could go on about this for a long time, but this just falls into - What are we even doing? What is the point of anything if we have to pay people who violate our standard to leave? [00:28:53] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah. I mean, we've been told since the summer of 2020 - Oh, we can't defund the police. Okay, then what are we going to do? Because we can't allow this sort of behavior, whether it is Nazi memorabilia in the actual work office in Kent or killing Manuel Ellis on the streets of Tacoma to continue - which is what I fear is actually what critics of police accountability want. They just want cops to be able to do as they please without consequences because in their minds - and these are mostly white folks like me who are saying these things - they don't think they're ever going to have to face those consequences. They want to maintain their hierarchy, their place at the top as much as they can. They see police as part of that. It's really toxic. And I think that it just shows, once again, the urgency of fixing this - including at the state level, to get the legislature out of this idea that some legislators have that - Oh, somehow it undermines labor unions and labor rights if we take accountability out of police bargaining. Well, military soldiers can't bargain, they can't form a union. They have a strict uniform code of military justice. They're held, in many cases, to much higher standards than police officers. I think we could point out ways in which even the military needs to be held to higher standards, but at least there are some. They exist and they operate. Police - they are convinced that they have the right to do as they please and to get away with it - and to be paid well for it, even when they do horrific things. And that is what we have to reject. And I think at this point - cities, we need to hold them accountable and push them. But the state needs to step in and we need to see changes to state law to make it easier to have real accountability at the local level. [00:30:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Final thing I want to talk about today is a lawsuit announced by Attorney General Bob Ferguson to stop the Kroger-Albertsons merger that they have announced their intention to do, saying that this is going to be bad for competition, creating grocery monopolies. Grocery prices are already sky high - this would make it worse. What do you think about this? [00:30:49] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I think it's absolutely the right thing to do and well within Attorney General Ferguson's right to protect local business and to protect consumers. And people notice that Fred Meyer and QFC are owned by the Kroger company already, and there's not enough competition there - prices there are higher than they should be. You add in Albertsons to the mix, and that's even less competition. I think people understand that more competition helps bring prices down, it's good for consumers. More local ownership - good for consumers. And this is popular, right? I think the public likes it. What's interesting to me is the way this gets covered. There's an article in The Seattle Times today about Ferguson's lawsuit. And to read the body of the article, it makes it very clear that the public loves it, that there's a legitimate reason for Ferguson to sue to protect the particular needs of Washington businesses and Washington consumers - because our grocery market industry is not always the same as other states. And we need to have our attorney general in there fighting for our interests. People get that. The Federal Trade Commission under Lina Khan is doing a great job really finally reinvigorating antitrust law and taking on mergers like this. And she's fantastic. But the article opens with this weird frame, questioning whether this is all a political stunt and saying - Oh, well, Ferguson jumped out and filed a lawsuit before the FTC did. Maybe he's trying to undermine the FTC or going rogue. Maybe it's just a political stunt. Yet the rest of the article makes it super clear that that's not the case at all. The article shows that the FTC says - No, we can work with Washington. They don't seem to be worried about this. In fact, the FTC regularly works with attorneys general around the country in multi-state lawsuits, in partnership with the federal government. So it struck me as a case where the second two-thirds of that article was really useful, but the top of it seemed to be The Times going out of their way to try to spin this against Ferguson. And I think it's a real lesson to the State Democratic Party and to Ferguson's campaign that they cannot trust the media to give him a fair shake here in 2024. The media is going to be hostile. The media is going to try to take things that look potentially helpful for Ferguson and spin them against him. So they're going to have to be ahead of that game and prepare for that, as well as make sure they're doing their own comms, using social media really well to get the story out there. Because the public gets it - the public doesn't want to see Albertsons, Fred Meyer, QFC all owned by the same company. They know it's either going to raise higher prices, fewer staff in stores, or fewer stores outright. We've already seen some stores close across the region. You're going to get more of those bad outcomes. So thank you, Bob Ferguson, for stepping up. And Bob, watch your back, because the media is coming for you. [00:33:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This is a positive thing. This is consumer protection. This is what we ask him to do as our attorney general. We have seen the direction that things go when there's consolidation. There's a lot of people who order delivery now. I don't know if many people have been in stores lately, but it is a miserable experience because they've reduced staff to untenable amounts where you have to wait for someone to unlock half the thing or stand in a special section and a special line. It's just - this is the wrong direction that we're going in. We've already seen this as a result of consolidation. We don't want to see any more. [00:34:03] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and you can look at another act of consolidation that I wish someone had sued to stop, which is when Rite Aid bought Bartell Drugs in 2020. Everyone knows that's been a disaster. Bartell, locally owned store - you had great locally owned products for sale. You could go and get your prescription filled really quickly and easily. Once that merger happened, all of a sudden people's prescriptions got lost, lines got really long, took you hours to get your prescription filled. And then all of a sudden, stores started closing all over the place. Now Walgreens is closing stores because there's not a lot of competition. There's no incentive for them to keep these stores open. And now we're going to see the same things happen with grocery stores - those trends that are already kind of lurking, accelerating if this merger goes through. So kudos to Bob Ferguson, but he's got to watch out for the people who are coming for him, especially in the media. [00:34:52] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, January 19th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is the Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter, or X, @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter. You can find me on all platforms - BlueSky, Threads, anything - @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

0:00 — Welcome! Have you ever participated in 7 Minutes in Heaven or spin the bottle? The guys share their stories…10:15 — When was your first kiss? The tales of Hot Peter13:35 — Peter takes his son to his first Oregon Ducks game16:40 — Playing the hypothetical game… would you take $2M now, or $5 a minute for a year? Is $2M enough money to not working anymore? The guys are split in their opinions25:45 — What infomercial(s) had a stranglehold on your life?34:05 — Why was Jason Mamoa at QFC's in Vancouver? Peter wants to make a private label wine37:00 — Public absolutely hammered in Week 7 of the NFL; Peter didn't win a single bet this past weekend; how much money you'd make if you rolled over every CMC anytime TD bet; tides turned for a number of teams,45:05 — Is there a ‘dominant' team in the NFL? 50:40 — Should the Brotherly Shove be banned? 53:10 — Weird ‘injuries' happening in the NFL… what is going on with Bijan Robinson and Deshaun Watson? Is guaranteed contracts bad for the NFL?59:25 — Bill Belichick continues his dominance over the Bills, who continue to show they're frauds; who is to blame?1:03:20 — The unfortunate stats held by Justin Herbert; Herbert is a rich man's Ryan Fitzpatrick?! Does Herbert have the clutch gene?1:16:50 — USC drops another game… should Caleb Williams sit the rest of the season to avoid injury?1:28:05 — Locks of the Week

A proposed $24.6 billion merger could bring together Kroger, the parent company of Fred Meyer and QFC, and Albertsons, which has also owned Safeway since 2015. The Pacific Northwest is one of the regions where the two companies compete directly, so the combination could leave Oregonians with fewer choices for grocery shopping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Increased security at QFC on Capitol Hill is deterring would-be criminals. KNOW IT ALL: 1) Supreme Court set to rule on affirmative action. 2) Implosion of submersible was detected days ago. 3) Mariners bats come alive in a victory against the Yankees. // Trump releases a new video on Truth Social ripping GOP opponents. State patrol addresses ferry line cutting in hopes of reducing road rage. // Riley Gaines testified before a Senate committee on biological men playing in women's sports. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Principals who abused drugs and carried a loaded weapon into QFC.//Utah's banning Bibles in some libraries?//Food News - A "meat retreat" for the avid carnivores amongst us, plants can sense when they're being touched.//CNBC says people shouldn't be so worried about inflation.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why Would People Lie About Climate Change? - QFC #033 - - The Corbett Report www.corbettreport.com/ The Corbett Report is an independent, listener-supported alternative news source. It operates on the principle of open source intelligence and provides podcasts, interviews, articles and videos about breaking news and important issues from 9/11 Truth and false flag terror to the Big Brother police state, eugenics, geopolitics, the central banking fraud and more. The Corbett Report is edited, webmastered, written, produced and hosted by James Corbett. James Corbett has been living and working in Japan since 2004. He started The Corbett Report website in 2007 as an outlet for independent critical analysis of politics, society, history, and economics. Since then he has written, recorded and edited thousands of hours of audio and video media for the website, including a podcast and several regular online video series. He is the lead editorial writer for The International Forecaster, the e-newsletter created by the late Bob Chapman. His work has been carried online by a wide variety of websites and his videos have garnered over 50,000,000 views on YouTube alone. His satirical piece on the discrepancies in the official account of September 11th, “9/11: A Conspiracy Theory” was posted to the web on September 11, 2011 and has so far been viewed nearly 3 million times. For more information about Corbett and his background, please listen to Episode 163 of The Corbett Report podcast, Meet James Corbett: Episode 163 – Meet James Corbett Broc West has been the Video Editor of The Corbett Report since December 2014. He currently lives in Southern Vietnam. Twitter: @brocwest Audio taken from: https://www.corbettreport.com/why-would-people-lie-about-climate-change-questions-for-corbett-033/

What did #ExxonKnew and When Did They Knew It? - QFC #048 - The Corbett Report www.corbettreport.com/ The Corbett Report is an independent, listener-supported alternative news source. It operates on the principle of open source intelligence and provides podcasts, interviews, articles and videos about breaking news and important issues from 9/11 Truth and false flag terror to the Big Brother police state, eugenics, geopolitics, the central banking fraud and more. The Corbett Report is edited, webmastered, written, produced and hosted by James Corbett. James Corbett has been living and working in Japan since 2004. He started The Corbett Report website in 2007 as an outlet for independent critical analysis of politics, society, history, and economics. Since then he has written, recorded and edited thousands of hours of audio and video media for the website, including a podcast and several regular online video series. He is the lead editorial writer for The International Forecaster, the e-newsletter created by the late Bob Chapman. His work has been carried online by a wide variety of websites and his videos have garnered over 50,000,000 views on YouTube alone. His satirical piece on the discrepancies in the official account of September 11th, “9/11: A Conspiracy Theory” was posted to the web on September 11, 2011 and has so far been viewed nearly 3 million times. For more information about Corbett and his background, please listen to Episode 163 of The Corbett Report podcast, Meet James Corbett: Episode 163 – Meet James Corbett Broc West has been the Video Editor of The Corbett Report since December 2014. He currently lives in Southern Vietnam. Twitter: @brocwest Audio taken from: https://www.corbettreport.com/what-did-exxonknew-and-when-did-they-knew-it-question-for-corbett-048/

The Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) launched the QFC Sustainable Sukuk and Bonds Framework in March 2022. The framework is part of the financial center's efforts to develop Qatar's debt capital market, which seeks to emulate the success of the Malaysian capital market. We speak to Aymane Doukali, the head of Islamic and structured finance at QFC, about how the framework will impact sustainable issuances in the region.

3PM - The police aren't coming, but now in Seattle, they have a name for that // Changes at QFC location bring plexiglass ‘maze,' worrying, frustrating customers // $4+ Billion Cost To Give Federal Employees A New Paid Holiday On Election Day // Companies are selling Juneteenth branded products. Here's why that's a big problem // CDC Issues Bizarre Sexual Guidelines for Americans Infected with Monkeypox See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While one company competing for the neighborhood's grocery dollars is enjoying its Capitol Hill honeymoon on Broadway, a chain with a longer running connection here is experiencing a few bumps in the relationship.In its latest move alienating customers here, QFC is suddenly putting its most sought after merchandise behind lock and key. With new security systems on the Broadway Market store's freezers, frozen goods including ice cream and sweets now require a employee to access much like the locked-down liquor aisles at area groceries.LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for new videos everyday. https://bit.ly/3KBUDSK

The theft in Seattle's Capital Hill is so bad that a couple QFC stores have taken to locking up the ice cream! Seattle reporter Jonathan Choe joined us this morning to talk about the story he broke the other day!

2pm - The Big Lead @ 2 // QFC on Capitol Hill stopping thieves now // Man attacked trying to stop thieves at Woodinville Rite Aid // Mom loses 21 YO son to fentanyl // Inslee still silent on the weird weather // Awesome Audio See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

---> Check out the Partners here.---> Subscribe to the Causeartist Newsletter here.In episode 131 of the Disruptors for GOOD podcast I speak with Gregory Vetter, CEO of Tessemae's on taking huge risks to start a clean label food company and pioneer clean label manufacturing.Gregory Vetter is the CEO of Tessemae's, flavor-forward, organic fresh food company, considered to be a lead innovator and disruptor in the clean food movement. Gregory, the oldest of the Vetter brothers, had the idea to launch Tessemae's based on the belief in his mother's wildly popular homemade dressing recipe and how it had the potential to create an entirely new clean food category.After winning over a local Whole Foods buyer and selling just under 700 bottles in one week, Gregory, his two brothers, Matt and Brian, and his family grew the business to become the #1 organic salad dressing brand in the refrigerated space. Gregory and his family paved the way for clean manufacturing on a mass scale by inventing the only gum-free dressing bottling process.That manufacturing process led to the invention of the “fresh condiment” category, the first Whole30 approved bottled dressings and condiments, and then continued pioneering of innovation across the grocery store with the creation of the first shelf-stable creamy dressings free of gums and additives with the “Tessemae's Pantry” line.Gregory, who values the importance of family and the concept of a wholesome family dinner, spoke at a TED Talk entitled “The Dinner Habit – The Recipe For Change” and is a finalist for the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2019 Mid-Atlantic Award.Tessemae's is an organic fresh food company that makes products with uncompromised ingredients of the highest quality. Tessemae's commitment to healthy eating and living is the core of its mission. As a pioneer in clean label manufacturing, Tessemae's has been focused on producing simple and delicious food with real ingredients that everyone can enjoy.All Tessemae's products are made and shipped from the U.S., and are available for purchase at Whole Food's Market, Kroger, Sprouts, Safeway, Baker's, Fry's, Mom's Organic Market, Dillon's, Earth Fare, Fresh Thyme, Fred Meyer, QFC, Walmart, City Market, Roundy's, Ralphs, King Soopers, Lucky's, Heinen's, HEB, Harris Teeter, Wegmans, Save Mart, Smith's, Amazon, Tessemaes.com, Target, Thrive Market and more retailers across the country.---> Check out the Partners here.---> Subscribe to the Causeartist Newsletter here.

Attention Data Protection Professionals Who Want To Take Their Career To The Next LevelYou're about to discover the secrets to staying on the right side of the regulator without the pain of living in constant fear of the regulator ever again!Hi, my name is Jamal Ahmed and I'd like to invite you to listen to this special episode of the #1 ranked Data Privacy podcast. In this episode, you'll discover the answers every Data Protection Professional needs to know, including: should data subjects have to pay to exercise their rights clarity on the consent conundrum the regulators' sole focus the value of the Privacy Pros Academy community secrets to enhancing your career prospects and so much more... So if you're serious about wanting to take your career to the next level, without staying stuck in the same place, listen now to this special episode that will show you exactly stay on the right side of the regulator. Subscribe Now Daniel Patterson is the Commissioner at the Data Protection Office at Qatar Financial Centre Authority. He has spent 17 years in the financial services and insurance industries and 12 years specializing in risk management. He achieved his CIPP/E and CIPM, and he has a degree in management and law from the Dublin Institute of Technology. Listen Now... Follow Jamal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmjahmed/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmjahmed/) Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dandpatterson/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dandpatterson/) Check out QFC: https://www.qfc.qa/en (https://www.qfc.qa/en) Join the Privacy Pros Academy Private Facebook Group for: • Free LIVE Training • Free Easy Peasy Data Privacy Guides • Data Protection Updates and so much more Apply to join here whilst it's still free: https://www.facebook.com/groups/privacypro (https://www.facebook.com/groups/privacypro)

On today's week-in-review, Crystal is joined by a new co-host, political consultant and founding partner at Upper Left Strategies, Seferiana Day. They discuss Corrections Officers and Public Defenders joining forces to demand a reduction in the county jail population to help address their COVID crisis, a new federal redistricting lawsuit alleging the new maps violate the Voting Rights Act, a new survey revealing 78% of Kroger (Fred Meyer & QFC in WA) workers struggle to afford food and shelter, and advice to people considering running for office in 2022.  As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Seferiana Day, at @seferiana. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Resources “Public Defenders Union Joins Jail Guards' Call to Address COVID Crisis” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola https://publicola.com/2022/01/17/public-defenders-union-joins-jail-guards-call-to-address-covid-crisis/    “Seattle Police Chief: No more stops for 'low-risk' traffic violations like expired tabs, biking without a helmet” from Capitol Hill Seattle: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2022/01/seattle-police-chief-no-more-stops-for-low-risk-traffic-violations-like-expired-tabs-biking-without-a-helmet/    “New legislative maps illegally dilute Latino votes in Central Washington, lawsuit says” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/new-legislative-maps-illegally-dilute-latino-votes-in-central-washington-lawsuit-says/    “Fred Meyer, QFC workers struggle in Washington to make ends meet, new report shows” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/fred-meyer-qfc-workers-struggle-in-washington-to-make-ends-meet-new-report-shows/    “WA Supreme Court upholds $18M campaign finance fine against grocery industry group” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-supreme-court-upholds-18m-campaign-finance-fine-against-grocery-industry-group/    Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspective on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time today: our co-host, political consultant and founding partner at Upper Left Strategies, Seferiana Day. Welcome. [00:00:52] Seferiana Day: Hello, thanks for having me. [00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Hello, hello - excited to have you on the program - a very talented political consultant and highly sought after political consultant. Excited to dive into some of the news of the week. And I guess just starting out, I wanted to talk about news that came out early in the week about the public defenders union joining jail guards to call to address the COVID crisis in the jails in Seattle and Kent that are under county control. Here, there's a huge surge of COVID-19 infections among staff and inmates at the King County jails that actually created this unusual alliance of corrections officers and public defenders, which should tell you how bad the problem is that they're coming together. They sent a joint letter to elected officials in Seattle and King County asking them to immediately intervene to reduce the jail's population and to stem the spread of the virus. One of the quotes from the letter is, "COVID -19 should not be a death sentence for anyone held in jail or anyone working in a jail," the unions wrote. "The stark reality is that if no changes are made, people will continue to get sick and continue to suffer." Paul Kiefer from PubliCola did a great article on this, and just a problem that we've seen before - where people in jail for misdemeanors, petty thefts, pretrial where they have not been convicted of anything, or just waiting to be charged with some simple misdemeanors, and they're basically saying, "If this is not a serious charge, please let them out." What do you see when you look at this? [00:02:44] Seferiana Day: Wow. Well, I'm just shocked, but also not surprised that this is happening in our system. I think it just really points to the fact that this is what's not seen by the general public - who knows what's going on inside the walls of the jail for this to come out. And for this alliance to form just shows the drastic nature of the problem and the fact that we're letting people really just kind of slip into jail. We don't understand what happens behind the door, behind the jail walls, and we almost have this hidden class of people, of citizens, of residents - and it's baffling to me, honestly. [00:03:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean our current system - if someone is convicted of something, they're sentenced to a term, but that does not mean that they should be treated inhumanely or left to suffer and die. That's unconstitutional. That is not supposed to happen. And right now you have corrections officers there themselves saying that you're jeopardizing everyone's safety, and asking for four real specific items. In their joint letter, they ask for - one, imposing immediate booking restrictions so that violent offenses are the only ones booked into county jail facilities. Two, stop issuing warrants for misdemeanor and nonviolent offenses. Three, immediately take all necessary steps to improve staffing and workplace safety in the jail. And four, make plans for the immediate release of all misdemeanor and nonviolent offenders. They're being very clear about this and saying that their safety, inmate safety, is at risk - that they cannot continue as they currently are, and enduring these staffing problems that they've been enduring, and just watching needless suffering. Now, this is also happening while Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison has really expressed her intentions to move in literally the exact opposite direction - to more aggressively pursue misdemeanor prosecutions. There was a story by one of the court watch organizations - with great Twitter accounts, by the way, and court watching is very important - but asking for someone who was unhoused, and one of the conditions was that they have home monitoring for two months. But an unhoused person doesn't have a house to do home monitoring in. So because they didn't have a house, they then asked for jail, which is just criminalizing poverty and homelessness once again. And that's exactly the thing that corrections officers are saying that is unsustainable and that doesn't make any sense. And also this week we saw SPD say that they're reconsidering and have moved some new items to the lowest enforcement priority section, so things like low-risk traffic violations for expired tags or biking without a helmet, which David Kroman had done a lot of reporting on at Crosscut - at how that disproportionately impacted unhoused people, that those things, according to the SPD Chief Diaz, quote, "These violations do not have a direct connection to the safety of other individuals on the roads, paths, or sidewalks. We know there are also reasons for concern that these violations may disproportionately fall on those who are unable to meet the financial requirements set forth by law." So, I mean, when you have the SPD chief saying, "Hey, this is basically criminalizing poverty, has nothing to do with public safety. Putting these people in jail doesn't make us any safer - let's actually use our resources on things that do," seems to make a lot of sense, but looks like a lot of tension between the Seattle City Attorney's office, and what SPD just said, and what corrections officers and public defenders are asking for. [00:07:05] Seferiana Day: Yeah. I think it really speaks to just the unprecedented nature of the COVID crisis, that it's almost - I mean, we are two years in, and what is it going to take for us to change our systems? We're seeing them kind of fall apart in front of us, right? And so in prior years, when we've talked about reforms to incarceration or alternatives to incarceration, but it's taking a public health crisis for us to see that we don't need to be convicting these low-level crimes because it really is criminalizing poverty and putting people into jail to basically get COVID and die if they don't have the proper care that they need. [00:07:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, no, absolutely. And to your point, this pandemic has really made plain and made worse so many preexisting conditions in society, and just our approach towards punishment and jailing people without connecting that to, "Hey, is this actually making the community safer? Is this helping these people to address the root causes of the problem so that this isn't a revolving door situation and you're setting them up for future problems, like the inability to get a job or the inability to gain housing?" So it really is a challenge. And, again, with our Trump-Republican Seattle City Attorney, with the charge-them-all, jail-them-all attitude, it just seems to fly in the face of what every other entity - law enforcement, those involved in the criminal legal system are saying and what the data shows. So just a mess that I hope is resolved, and we'll certainly be looking to Executive Dow Constantine, the King County Council, Mayor Harrell, and the Seattle City Council to hopefully take meaningful action or do what they can to influence that. Another thing I wanted to touch on were - this week, we saw another lawsuit pop up - don't know how this one is going to end up, but certainly an issue that has been on a lot of people's radar - with the redistricting maps. There is a new lawsuit alleging that the legislative maps illegally dilute Latino votes in Central Washington. There's an article in The Times by Jim Brunner, another one in Crosscut detailing this - we'll put those in the episode notes - but a new lawsuit basically saying that, "Hey, this violates the Federal Voting Rights Act. And they have purposely split and diluted the Latino vote to dilute their power." It's a tactic that we've seen in several areas around the country to gerrymander and to disenfranchise non-white male landowners from voting. And so the lawsuit was filed on behalf of eight Latino and Latina residents of Yakima and Franklin Counties by attorneys with voting rights advocacy groups, including UCLA Voting Rights Project, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Campaign Legal Center, as well as Kennewick attorney Edwardo Morfin. So we will see how this lawsuit turns out. If you're asking me my opinion, I think it has merit. This has been talked about for the entire process through redistricting - that the maps that were proposed - most of them did not look like they adhered to the Voting Rights Act, particularly in Central Washington. What do you think about this? [00:11:12] Seferiana Day: I mean, I think Central Washington, and Yakima in particular, for almost a decade has been kind of the center of a conversation around the Latino vote. And I believe in 2014 when they decided that - also because of a ruling - that they needed to redistrict the City Council races so that it would actually be representative because it's a predominantly Latino city and it was very, very segregated. And I believe a majority of the councilmembers there were white and they were from certain parts of the city. And so, just for a decade, it's been a hot topic of conversation - like who is actually representing this community that is largely Latino. [00:12:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And I mean, it really is a move to create a permanent underclass. I mean, so many Latinos are working on farms there owned by white people who wanted to maintain power. And so they're bringing people there to work for them and to create a profit for them, but not wanting to share any power in how their communities are operated, and in fact operating with hostility towards people who they're bringing in to help them, and not recognizing their full humanity and only viewing them as instruments of profit and really subjugation - to work for them and do nothing else and to eliminate modes of mobility and representation to fight against unfair working conditions. We just saw a summer where farm workers died because they lacked adequate protections from the heat - during record heat. And I look at things like that and look at how so many areas in our system are stacked against them. And this is certainly a foundational one. And so 2004 - Yakima County had to enter into a consent decree with the Justice Department because they would not provide Spanish language voting materials - again, to a population that they court and need in their community. And like you said, in 2014, they were ordered to change their council districts because of that. I mean, just a long history of problems - don't know if this is going to affect timelines or alter the current boundaries. Or even if found successful - is it just going to alter the boundaries in those particular areas while all the other ones stay the same? A lot of unknowns - we'll see how this unfolds. I'm not aware of an anticipated timeline that this may roll out in, so we'll just keep our eyes peeled on what happens here. Another element that we saw this week were Fred Meyer and QFC workers struggling to make ends meet - after a new report - following a survey of grocery workers. What did you see here? [00:14:30] Seferiana Day: Well, I just see the - I guess my biggest question around this is who decides when the pandemic is over? We're seeing kind of a piecemeal approach over the past two years of the pandemic - of hazard pay. In Seattle, we have hazard pay because the City has continued to keep it. But as this article states, Federal Way - that hazard pay lasted three months. And you've got workers across the state who have to go to work to feed their families, and they're being paid minimum wage. And it's just - it's a classic story, really - of corporations doing all they can to pay their workers as little as possible. And these are unionized workers, which to me is surprising, and makes me wonder what can unions do? What can even the public be doing to support these folks who are on the frontlines every day and have been there for the last two years, while many of us are in our homes? I'm working from home often, and these grocery workers are out there on the frontlines. [00:15:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Out there on the frontlines dealing with - I mean, we see the stories everywhere. We see people acting ridiculous, locally and nationally, and that really falling on the back of service workers, grocery workers, people on the frontlines to not only manage their own jobs, but manage people acting ridiculously in their store, and needing to - better de-escalation techniques than police officers is what's being asked of them right now. And it really is a challenge. And specifically, it was a survey of more than 10,000 unionized Kroger workers in the Western US, and 78% are struggling to afford basic necessities like food and shelter. One third of those respondents were from Washington where Kroger owns Fred Meyer and QFC stores. One of the issues is that a lot of them are only working part-time, so minimum wage doesn't cut it, and full-time barely. I mean, it's ticking up, but it certainly is far behind inflation and what the cost of living has been. And so to then be working 18 or 20 hours a week and to not know what that schedule is going to be - a city like Seattle has some scheduling regulations, but other cities do not. So someone who came in getting more hours and that can just be cut back and cut down - there's a lot of financial insecurity and everything that results from that. And so this is just kind of a glimpse into - even in a unionized workplace, there are still things that need to be improved. And one of the things that we see, and a worker says in here, is, "Hey, our union did negotiate benefits and some of them start at a certain amount of hours per week, but they keep scheduling us below that amount of hours, so they don't have to pay more and so we don't make enough money." That's a challenge. And I know in that article, it also said that a new contract is going to be negotiated in May - I think it was local UFCW Chapter 21, I think it was, and that they're going to be looking for significant improvements. And I don't know the details, but certainly before the pandemic, I recall a lot of grocery stores talking about how hard times were, how challenging things were. And so in those negotiated contracts, it probably reflected that. Pandemic happened and things got much more dangerous for workers, but wow, the profits skyrocketed in grocery stores and that has not been shared with the workforce. And so just hearing about how just swimming in cash Kroger has been, how incredibly profitable they have been, and the kinds of bonuses that their executives are getting - and then hearing that a majority, a vast majority of their workforce is food-insecure, shelter-insecure, some are actually on public assistance, which basically means that the public is subsidizing the exploitative work practices of this employer. If they're not paying enough, they're just saying, "We expect taxpayers to pick up the bill and to subsidize our profit." It's not like they don't have the money. They're just keeping the money for themselves and expecting us to backfill it. And it just doesn't seem to make much sense. [00:19:30] Seferiana Day: Right. And this article talks about how the CEO himself brought in $22 million in 2020 - which is double the five years before, 909x more than the median employee at Kroger, that brought in $24,000. And that is the same for every corporation in America - that is the situation that we're seeing. And that is the inequality that's just being perpetuated by the pandemic - those that have to go to work every day and work for minimum wage at risk, risking their health. While you have "professional" workers able to work from home, able to keep their jobs, work in the comfort of their home and not be at risk, and continue making more money. And there's just a growing inequality there. [00:20:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Growing inequality, growing resentment, growing intolerance of it, because it really just seems like a callous, cold-hearted exploitation. And to a point you made earlier, trying to pretend the pandemic is over. And the pandemic keeps saying, "Pretend all you want. You're going to have to contend with me," as everyone at schools and businesses and looking at products that are having a hard time shipping because the supply chain problem is not this abstract thing. It's people are not there in the places to get goods from one place to another. It's people who are missing there - people who are sick, people who are taking care of family members, people who can't afford to stay at a job, can't afford childcare. These are people missing in this supply chain problem. So it is really offensive to think about everything we're trying to address in society and the revenue that we need, and so much of it is going to directly and indirectly subsidize these corporations who are not struggling. They're more profitable than they've ever been before, and it just seems absolutely backwards. And this comes in a week where the Supreme Court upheld a judgment against the grocery industry, because while they were fighting it - they fought against hero pay while they're bringing in these record profits, and they fought against a food labeling initiative years ago and sought to cover up who was actually funding it. And just had a record fine of $18 million upheld by the Washington State Supreme Court because they spent more than $11 million and tried to hide that it was coming from Coca-Cola, and General Mills, Nestle - a big coordinated campaign that they tried to make it seem like it was Ma and Pa, locally-owned grocers. And they seem to have deep, unending pockets when it comes to fighting anything that would give their workers a couple more bucks and allow them to reliably feed and house themselves. And will spend tens of millions of dollars of doing that, raking in tens of millions of dollars in profit, and just doesn't make any sense. It would be cheaper to just pay them. But for some reason, that seems like a big problem. Anyhoo, we will move on from that, but we will also continue to keep an eye on what's happening there. And also hope that those UFCW 21 negotiations in May are very fruitful. So I want to talk a little bit now just about where we find ourselves in this election cycle. You're a political consultant, as am I - lots of candidates are considering running for office. Every legislative district has elections this year. People are electing all of their representatives, some of their senators - all of their senators. And we'll see some open seats - as we've seen, there will be some challenges to incumbents, I assume, as we see every year. So in this time when people are considering running, what is the advice that you give to potential candidates as they're considering whether to actually go ahead and run? [00:24:23] Seferiana Day: Yeah, I would say we work with a lot of first-time candidates. We work with a lot of candidates of color. We work with a lot of candidates who are more on the progressive, maybe a little more radical, spectrum or end of the spectrum. And I would say that one of the first things that I tell candidates that I work with who maybe haven't run before is that - even if you've been an advocate, you're about to enter electoral politics, which is a different beast. It's really about - I think there can be a tension between telling your story and being authentic to who you are and what your values and vision are, and kind of marrying that with the electoral process - which because the topics we talked about earlier around voter suppression, the lack of representation on a really systemic level - we're really trying to cater our message to people who vote, people who have access to voting. Which can sometimes go against kind of what you really - what you really dream of is that you're going to be able to turn out the youth vote, people of color to vote - and I think in reality, we're often trying to give that message to moderates, depending on the seat. And I think this year we're looking at a prosecutor's race, which is countywide. We're looking at these legislative races where it's going to be a very important year. I think I'm nervous - seeing how we can maintain our majorities. And so it's really important that we're sending that message out to all voters. And I tell my candidates to really be ready to be authentic with themselves, but also to have conversations with folks that they may not agree with, and that it's important to talk to everyone, it's important to get your message out there. [00:26:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I think that's right on. And for me, I think - I certainly tell people, "Hey, this is going to be different than something that you've done before." I really try and help people understand where they are and what they believe. And it's okay not to have all of the answers today, but kind of have a framework that you process information and policy through, or your own ideology. But really, elections are not about the candidate, they're about the voters and potential voters - people in the community. And your job is to connect with them and to communicate with them in the way that they receive information, which may be different than how they're used to delivering it. And also voting is not a - as much as we like to think that it is, it is not a logical decision. It's an emotional decision, and people need to feel some kind of connection with you that you understand where they're coming from. And even if they don't agree with you completely - if they feel that you care about making their lives better, they'll hear you out, and they'll give you a fair shot most of the time. But getting your message to them is a challenge and oftentimes an expensive one. And doing the work to get those resources in to effectively communicate with people, enough people to win, is work. And so to be prepared for the work of campaigning, which may even - to your point, like someone who's been organizing for a long time, or an advocate for a long time, who has been around politics but hasn't run themselves, may have expectations of like, "Oh, I've done this before." And it isn't the same. Some of it is different. And so it's just important to know that. And elections are weird and strange also. And so having people who have been through it to help you along - having a solid consultant is just really useful because there are a lot of weird things. There are a lot of things that are gate-kept. You look at our national election system - you look at what it takes to get on ballots, and it is not easy. There are tons of rules and regulations with campaign finance rules and everything with our PDC here, the SEEC in Seattle - you need people in your corner to keep you from falling into just weird little traps that would trap someone if you don't have someone actively saying, "Watch out for this." So it's just a serious time commitment. It's not always fun. It's a lot of sitting on the phone. It's a lot of knocking on doors. And a lot of monotony to be prepared for it, but you then get to represent people. And that's when the real work starts. As hard as a campaign can be, actually being accountable for making those decisions is in many ways harder than the campaigning. So it's an interesting and challenging thing. You have successfully guided a lot of candidates through that process, particularly when it comes to, I guess, a couple of things. I mean, so both sitting here as consultants, as non-white consultants, and how, I guess, in terms of working with candidates of color and with white candidates - do people approach you differently with both of those? [00:30:29] Seferiana Day: You mean do candidates approach me differently? [00:30:32] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. [00:30:33] Seferiana Day: Oh, yes. I would say, and there are times when I'm shocked because sometimes white candidates will rush over to us and want to work with us. And candidates of color are sometimes doubtful, to be perfectly honest. And I think that's hard. I think it can be really hard to know that we still after - this is our fifth year, we're entering into our fifth year - that we still have to prove ourselves, especially among candidates of color who expect a white consultant to kind of know what to do and they trust them. And I'm not saying that's every candidate of color. Obviously, we work with many, but I've encountered that as a woman consultant of color - that there's often doubt. And it goes unsaid - you kind of feel it. You're like, "Oh. They doubt the expertise. They doubt the experience and the perspective." And so you're always kind of trying to make up for that doubt that exists because I'm young and I'm Brown, and so yeah, I think that you do get approached differently. And I think as consultants of color, it's often assumed that we're the social media consultant or we're the [crosstalk] experts. And we have to remind people that we're general consultants - we do it all. And yeah, and it's kind of a constant, I would say, dialogue with folks just to remind them, like, "We know what we're doing." [00:32:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, yes, that is definitely a thing. And I mean, we've talked about this a little bit before just in general conversation, but yeah, it's a weird thing. And I've experienced this off and on for the past 10 years where, yeah, sometimes candidates of color will be like, "Well, I think it's safer for me to go with a white consultant," and man, that's a loaded word - safer - and really the advice to candidates a lot of the time that I give, that I stand by, is, "Look to consultants who win races like the one you're looking to go into." That should be your primary lens and consideration. Can they win competitive races? Or is it a lot of incumbents? Are they working with candidates of color? Are they having races where they're looking like things are ahead and the polling looked good at one time, and then things just continued to decline? What is the track record of the consultant that you're looking at? And one of the good things about Black consultants, consultants of color in Washington, is the track records often speak for themselves, but it is a weird dynamic - that feeling like, "Well..." I think some of it is, "People might not give me a fair shake as a Black candidate with a Black consultant. So if I have a white consultant, they can do the work of talking to the community or something." It's a weird thing. [00:33:50] Seferiana Day: [crosstalk] [00:33:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And again, not with all candidates, but it has been a thing that has certainly happened, and it is a strange dynamic. And then sometimes I will get, I've actually gotten a ton, where white candidates will assume that I only work with candidates of color. And I don't do many candidate races anymore, but when I was, it would just be like, "Well, you work in urban areas," or, "You work with urban candidates or just candidates of color or something." It's like, okay, most of the work and candidates I did were in suburban and rural areas and really winning races in the places where, frankly, a lot of white consultants didn't want to work or feel like it was profitable to work. And so it's just like, well, I'm kind of a suburban and rural person more than I am the super inside the city, in terms of winning elections. But it's just this weird thing, the assumption that people have. And certainly like you said, "Well, we want another general consultant, but you can do social media. Well, you do." It's just like, "What would make you think that I would just want to... No, that's not what... Unless you're going to pay me something that you're not going to be happy paying someone doing just social media, I don't know what that's going to accomplish," but it's an interesting thing. I think generally at this point, candidates are just well-served by making sure their teams represent their community and all that that is, and that you have visibility into as many areas in your community - as many communities, organizations, interests - have a connection and visibility to those, have a broad cabinet. If everyone is saying the same thing, that's a red flag. If everyone is talking in the exact same way, that's a red flag, right? You need to make sure that you're able to hear, see, listen to everyone in your community, because solving for all of those problems only will give them confidence in you as a candidate. If you don't even see them, if you can't have a conversation in a way that they could hear, those are votes that you're not getting and that may hinder you from running. But we'll see, it's not an easy process. It can be rewarding if this is what you really want. Have this be what you really want, have this be an office that you really want to seek. Offices are different. Some people love legislative positions, and that's really where they can excel and make a big difference, others more on the municipal level or on a county level, but be intentional about what you choose, if you're considering it. And man, go to trainings. Please get trained. Please get some real information from people who've been there and done that. And it utilizes a number of elements in organizing and certainly governing. Good governing includes good organizing, but the nuts and bolts of campaigns are not identical to that of kind of organizing to help educate a community or shift opinion over a long term, which is valid and necessary. Campaigns are just a little different. And so you just have to be prepared for that. [00:37:39] Seferiana Day: I agree. And I think one last note that I have is just around authenticity and that that's - if someone's considering running - thinking about who can I work with, what team can I build around me that's going to let me be authentic to who I am so I don't lose myself in the campaign? Because when people are voting - yes, campaigns are - it's different than being in office, but when people vote for you, they're going to want to know that you're going to be the same person elected that you were on the campaign trail. And so having a team around you that will let you speak to your values and vision is really important. [00:38:17] Crystal Fincher: Really important. And I'm glad you said that, and it is a red flag if someone is telling you, "Oh, just say this." That will never work. You have to believe what you are saying. If you don't, it's going to show, you're going to have a hard time being consistent with it. You're going to have to get used to talking to people and being able to disagree with them - it sounds so cliché - disagree with them without being disagreeable, have a conversation. I mean, I guess there are some times where it's fine to be disagreeable when you disagree with someone. But if we're not debating someone's personal identity or dignity, and it's details in a proposal or something, you can disagree, it's fine. And have those conversations. But you have to know where you stand and you have to be consistent with that. And if someone is telling you that you don't have to be, that's a red flag. So just as people are considering - please do consider - we need more people running for office who represent more of the community. But just please make an educated, informed decision. Get a good consultant - Seferiana and Upper Left are good consultants, there are a number of good consultants out there, but definitely get one. Do some campaign trainings, really understand what you're getting into so you can adequately prepare for it. Those who come in prepared just have such an advantage when it comes to winning. There's so much that you have to do in a campaign and figuring out campaigning during a campaign - you just can't afford to do it. It just takes up too much time and resources. So thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your wisdom. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM this Friday, January 21st, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today was political consultant and founding partner at Upper Left Strategies, Seferiana Day. You can find her on Twitter @seferiana, that's S-E-F-E-R-I-A-N-A. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.  

Magnesium is essential for the immune system, including in the fight against cancer University of Basel (Switzerland), January 19, 2022 Previous studies have shown that cancerous growths spread faster in the bodies of mice when the animals received a low-magnesium diet – and that their defense against flu viruses was also impaired. However, there has so far been little research into how exactly this mineral affects the immune system. Now, researchers have discovered that T cells can eliminate abnormal or infected cells efficiently only in a magnesium-rich environment. Specifically, magnesium is important for the function of a T cell surface protein called LFA-1. (NEXT) More lycopene linked to longer lives for people with metabolic syndrome University of Nebraska Medical Center, January 16, 2022 Higher blood levels of lycopene may reduce the risk of mortality in people with metabolic syndrome, says a new study from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Lycopene is an antioxidant that is present in red- and pink-colored fruits and vegetables. As well as being used as a food coloring, it is also used in supplements and functional foods and beverages. New data published in Nutrition Research suggests that higher serum levels of lycopene were associated with greater survival times for people with metabolic syndrome, compared to low serum levels. (NEXT) Too much sugar during adolescence may alter brain's reward circuits European Journal of Neuroscience, January 19, 2022 A new study in rats may provide significant insights into the long-term impacts of over-consumption of sugary foods during adolescence. The study shows that the enjoyment of such foods later in adulthood is reduced in those who over-consumed early in life. Investigators found that this decrease in reward relates to reduced activity in one of the key hubs of the brain's reward circuitry, called the nucleus accumbens. Such long-lasting alterations could have important implications for reward-related disorders such as substance abuse or eating disorders. (NEXT) Unveiled the epigenetic mechanism by which vitamin D modulates the tolerance of the immune system Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (Germany), January 19, 2022 In autoimmunity, the mechanisms that guarantee that our defense system does not attack our own body - tolerance to oneself - does not work properly. Multiple sclerosis, which affects one in every 1,000 people in Spain, is a serious autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the myelin sheath of some types of neurons, causing progressive neurological disability. Dr. Esteban Ballestar, leader of the Epigenetics and immune diseases group at the Josep Carrreras Leukaemia Research Institute, and Dr. Eva Martínez-Cáceres, leader of the Immunopathology group at the IGTP-Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol, have recently published in the prestigious journal Cell Reports the mechanism by which vitamin D activates the tolerance program of dendritic cells. (NEXT) Study links poor sleep in seniors to more severe arteriosclerosis University of Toronto, January 19, 2022 Poor sleep quality in older people is associated with more severe arteriosclerosis in the brain as well as a greater burden of oxygen-starved tissue (infarcts) in the brain, both of which can contribute to the risk of stroke and cognitive impairment, according to the newest findings reported in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke. The relationship between cardiovascular disease and so-called "fragmented" sleep has been studied in the past, but this is the first study to look specifically for an association between sleep fragmentation and detailed microscopic measures of blood vessel damage and infarcts in autopsied brain tissue from the same individuals. Fragmented sleep occurs when sleep is interrupted by repeated awakenings or arousals. In this study, sleep was disrupted on average almost seven times per hour. Researchers found that greater sleep fragmentation was associated with 27 percent higher odds of having severe arteriosclerosis. Moreover, for each additional two arousals during one hour of sleep, researchers reported a 30 percent increase in the odds that subjects had visible signs of oxygen deprivation in their brain. (OTHER NEWS) America's New Class War Chris Hedges, January 18, 2022 There is one last hope for the United States. It does not lie in the ballot box. It lies in the union organizing and strikes by workers at Amazon, Starbucks, Uber, Lyft, John Deere, Kellogg, the Special Metals plant in Huntington, West Virginia, owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the Northwest Carpenters Union, Kroger, teachers in Chicago, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, fast-food workers, hundreds of nurses in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. Organized workers, often defying their timid union leadership, are on the march across the United States. Over four million workers, about 3% of the work force, mostly from accommodation and food services, healthcare and social assistance, transportation, housing, and utilities have walked away from jobs, rejecting poor pay along with punishing and risky working conditions. There is a growing consensus – 68% in a recent Gallup poll with that number climbing to 77% of those between the ages of 18 and 34 – that the only way left to alter the balance of power and force concessions from the ruling capitalist class is to mobilize and strike, although only 9% of the U.S. work force is unionized. Forget the woke Democrats. This is a class war. The Democratic Party will not push through the kind of radical New Deal reforms that in the 1930s staved off fascism and communism. Its empty political theater, which stretches back to the Clinton administration, was on full display in Atlanta when Biden called for revoking the filibuster to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, knowing that his chances of success are zero. Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, along with several of the state's voting rights groups, boycotted the event in a very public rebuke. They were acutely aware of Biden's cynical ploy. When the Democrats were in the minority, they clung to the filibuster like a life raft. Then Sen. Barack Obama, along with other Democrats, campaigned for it to remain in place. And a few days ago, the Democratic leadership employed the filibuster to block legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz. The Democrats have been full partners in the dismantling of our democracy, refusing to banish dark and corporate money from the electoral process and governing, as Obama did, through presidential executive actions, agency “guidance,” notices and other regulatory dark matter that bypass Congress. The Democrats, who helped launch and perpetuate our endless wars, were also co-architects of trade deals such as NAFTA, expanded surveillance of citizens, militarized police, the largest prison system in the world and a raft of anti-terrorism laws such as Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) that abolish nearly all rights, including due process and attorney-client privilege, to allow suspects to be convicted and imprisoned with secret evidence they and their lawyers are not permitted to see. The squandering of staggering resources to the military — $777.7 billion a year — passed in the Senate with an 89-10 vote and in the House of Representatives with a 363-70 vote, coupled with the $80 billion spent annually on the intelligence agencies has made the military and the intelligence services, many run by private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, nearly omnipotent. The Democrats long ago walked out on workers and unions. The Democratic governor of Maine, Janet Mills, for example, killed a bill a few days ago that would have allowed farm workers in the state to unionize. On all the major structural issues there is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. The longer the Democratic Party does not deliver real reforms to ameliorate the economic hardship, exacerbated by soaring inflation rates, the more it feeds the frustration of many of its supporters, widespread apathy (there are 80 million eligible voters, a third of the electorate, who do not cast ballots) and the hatred of the “liberal” elites stoked by Donald Trump's cultish Republican Party. Its signature infrastructure package, Build Back Better, when you read the fine print, is yet another infusion of billions of government money into corporate bank accounts. This should not surprise anyone, given who funds and controls the Democratic Party. The rapacious pillage by the elites, many of whom bankroll the Democratic Party, has accelerated since the financial crash of 2008 and the pandemic. Wall Street banks recorded record profits for 2021. As the Financial Times noted, they milked the underwriting fees from Fed-based borrowing and profited from mergers and acquisitions. They have pumped their profits, fueled by roughly $5 trillion in Fed spending since the beginning of the pandemic, as Matt Taibbi points out, into massive pay bonuses and stock buybacks. “The bulk of this new wealth—most—is being converted into compensation for a handful of executives,” Taibbi writes. “Buybacks have also been rampant in defense, pharmaceuticals, and oil & gas, all of which also just finished their second straight year of record, skyrocketing profits. We're now up to about 745 billionaires in the U.S., who've collectively seen their net worth grow about $2.1 trillion to $5 trillion since March 2020, with almost all that wealth increase tied to the Fed's ballooning balance sheet.” Kroger is typical. The corporation, which operates some 2,800 stores under different brands, including Baker's, City Market, Dillons, Food 4 Less, Foods Co., Fred Meyer, Fry's, Gerbes, Jay C Food Store, King Soopers, Mariano's, Metro Market, Pay-Less Super Markets, Pick'n Save, QFC, Ralphs, Ruler and Smith's Food and Drug, earned $4.1 billion in profits in 2020. By the end of the third quarter of 2021, it had $2.28 billion in cash, an increase of $399 million in the first quarter of 2020. Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen made over $22 million, nearly doubling the $12 million he made in 2018. This is over 900 times the salary of the average Kroger worker. Kroger in the first three quarters of 2021 also spent an estimated $1.3 billion on stock buybacks. Class struggle defines most of human history. Marx got this right. It is not a new story. The rich, throughout history, have found ways to subjugate and re-subjugate the masses. And the masses, throughout history, have cyclically awoken to throw off their chains. (NEXT) Was Peter Daszak Working For The Central Intelligence Agency? Kanekoa, January 18, 2022 “We found other coronaviruses in bats, a whole host of them, some of them looked very similar to SARS. So we sequenced the spike protein: the protein that attaches to cells. Then we… Well, I didn't do this work, but my colleagues in China did the work. You create pseudo particles, you insert the spike proteins from those viruses, see if they bind to human cells. At each step of this, you move closer and closer to this virus could really become pathogenic in people. You end up with a small number of viruses that really do look like killers." This statement was said by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak at a 2016 forum discussing “emerging infectious diseases and the next pandemic”. Daszak, who received more than $118 million in grants and contracts from federal agencies, including $53 million from USAID, $42 million from DOD, and $15 million from HHS, appeared to boast about the manipulation of “killer” SARS-like coronaviruses carried out by his “colleagues in China” at the now infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology. According to investigative research done by independent-journalist Sam Husseini and The Intercept, much of the money awarded to EcoHealth Alliance did not focus on health or ecology, but rather on biowarfare, bioterrorism, and other dangerous uses of deadly pathogens. EcoHealth Alliance received the majority of its funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a State Department subsidiary that serves as a frequent cover for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Their second largest source of funding was from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which is a branch of the Department of Defense (DOD) which states it is tasked to “counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.” The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has a long history of acting as a contract vehicle for various CIA covert activities. With an annual budget of over $27 billion and operations in over 100 countries, one former USAID director, John Gilligan, once admitted it was “infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people.” Gilligan explained that “the idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas; government, volunteer, religious, every kind.” From 2009 to 2019, USAID partnered with EcoHealth Alliance on their PREDICT program which identified over 1,200 new viruses, including over 160 coronavirus strains; trained roughly 5,000 people around the world to identify new diseases; and improved or developed 60 research laboratories. What better way for the CIA to collect intelligence on the world's biological warfare capabilities? Dr. Andrew Huff received his Ph.D. in Environmental Health specializing in emerging diseases before becoming an Associate Vice President at EcoHealth Alliance, where he developed novel methods of bio-surveillance, data analytics, and visualization for disease detection. On January 12, 2022, Dr. Andrew Huff issued a public statement (on Twitter) in which he claimed, Peter Daszak, the President of EcoHealth Alliance, told him that he was working for the CIA. Dr. Huff continued, “…I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA / IC community orchestrated the COVID coverup acting as an intermediary between Fauci, Collins, Daszak, Baric, and many others. At best, it was the biggest criminal conspiracy in US history by bureaucrats or political appointees.” In February 2020, Daszak told University of North Carolina coronavirus researcher Dr. Ralph Baric that they should not sign the statement condemning the lab-leak theory so that it seems more independent and credible. “You, me and him should not sign this statement, so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn't work in a counterproductive way,” Daszak wrote. More unredacted emails have revealed that while these scientists held the private belief that the lab release was the most likely scenario, they still worked to seed the natural origin narrative for the public through the papers published in Nature Medicineand The Lancet. If Dr. Andrew Huff is telling the truth, Fauci, Collins, and Daszak might be covering up the lab origin not only for themselves, but also for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Government.

5PM - Sully: WSDOT to hang up ‘764-HERO' HOV violator program // Clarence Thomas criticizes judges for veering into politics // Labor board: Fred Meyer, QFC ban on Black Lives Matter buttons violated law // Your Letters + Letter of the Day See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

3PM - Washington state again will require active job search for people collecting unemployment benefits // Hiring blitz at QFC, Fred Meyer stores: Walk in and get a job // U.S. Inflation Is Highest in 13 Years as Prices Surge 5% // Wealthiest Executives Paid Little to Nothing in Federal Income Taxes, Report Says // Heavier Passengers on Planes Mean New Safety Limits for Airlines See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A weekly podcast exploring stories at the intersection of faith and culture through an inclusive Christian lens. This week Mitch and Autumn talk about the exodus of many from the Southern Baptist Convention and explore the concept of #SacredSpaces. Later, Nathanial Green joins the show. Nathanial is the Communications Manager for Q Christian Fellowship (QFC). QFC is a diverse community with varied backgrounds, cultures, theologies and denominations, drawn together through their love of Christ and their belief that every person is a beloved child of God. Learn more about Q Christian Fellowship and their important work at https://www.qchristian.org/.

A weekly podcast exploring stories at the intersection of faith and culture through an inclusive Christian lens. This week Mitch and Autumn talk about the exodus of many from the Southern Baptist Convention and explore the concept of #SacredSpaces.Later, Nathanial Green joins the show. Nathanial is the Communications Manager for Q Christian Fellowship (QFC). QFC is a diverse community with varied backgrounds, cultures, theologies and denominations, drawn together through their love of Christ and their belief that every person is a beloved child of God.Learn more about Q Christian Fellowship and their important work at https://www.qchristian.org/.

3PM - ‘It’s devastating’: As a QFC store winds down, neighbors and politicians thank employees, criticize closure // Why Implicit Bias Training For Police Doesn't Work — And What Can Be Done To Combat Racism // Company Talent Contests Are Back—With Trapeze Stunts and Gingerbread Skyscrapers // Our long pandemic hair is finally getting cut — and hair donation charities are overwhelmed See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Employees call Seattle hazard pay a 'win' despite QFC store closures

Joe is a true entrepreneur. Hear about how he came to start Tutta Bella, his passion for food, quality, and people, how he supports the community, and actually gets government officials to listen to him (sometimes).As we know, the restaurant industry was devastated by Covid. Tutta Bella was fortunate to be able to pivot to being a food provider and having a strategic partner (QFC) to allow that pivot to be successful.As all businesses should be, Tutta Bella is constantly looking on how to evolve, be nimble, and expand.Best of all, they have the best pizza you'll ever have.

This week Crystal and co-host Heather Weiner, local political consultant, dissect the news of the week, including: The Washington State Senate's passage of a capital gains tax;  Mayor Durkan refusing FEMA funding for Seattle to support the city's efforts to house homeless folks;  Kroger's closing of grocery stores in response to the hazard pay requirement by Seattle (and now King County); Our city's ongoing vaccination efforts; AND The record number of women of color running for office this year in our region! As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii. Find today's co-host, Heather Weiner at @hlweiner. More information is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Resources: Find out how to engage in Monday's hearing on capital gains tax here: https://app.leg.wa.gov/CSIRemote/Testimony/Form?chamber=House&meetingFamilyId=28825&agendaItemFamilyId=141418&remoteLocationId=52&testify=False Learn more about this week's passage of capital gain's taxes in the senate: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/after-fierce-debate-washington-senate-approves-new-tax-on-capital-gains-by-one-vote/  Read Publicola's coverage of tech bros advocating against capital gains, while receiving taxpayer funded paychecks: https://publicola.com/2021/03/02/capital-gains-tax-opponents-received-taxpayer-funded-aid/  Get into our state's current upside down tax code here: https://crosscut.com/opinion/2021/02/can-wa-lawmakers-finally-flip-states-upside-down-tax-system  Learn more about Mayor Durkan's rejection of FEMA funding here: https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2021/03/03/mayor-durkan-rejects-federal-funding-hotel-shelters-city-opening-new-permanent-vaccine  Read about King County expanding hazard pay to unincorporated areas here: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/king-county-approves-hazard-pay-for-grocery-workers-in-unincorporated-areas/  Follow continued vaccination efforts at the Washington State Department of Health website: https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/COVID19/vaccine  Support women of color running for office at https://www.persistpacwa.org/, or https://www.opportunity-pac.com/  Learn about National Women's Political Caucus of Washington trainings, including an upcoming training specifically for women of color running for office, here: https://www.nwpcwa.org/events   Transcript: Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks and Wonks. I'm your host Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspective on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show were always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program friend of the show and today's cohost, local political consultant and wonderful, incredible woman, Heather Weiner.  Heather Weiner: [00:00:45] Hi, Crystal. So excited to see you. So much to talk about today.  Crystal Fincher: [00:00:50] Lots to talk about. There has been a lot happening and I guess we can start off by talking about - Hey! Capital gains passed through the Senate, it's moving through the Legislature, it's over to the House. This is a big deal.  Heather Weiner: [00:01:07] This is a really big deal. I mean, okay. Taxes - not that sexy, but boy is this exciting! Okay.  Crystal Fincher: [00:01:13] Taxes are hot.  Heather Weiner: [00:01:14] All right. Taxes are so hot. You want to, you want to get my attention, baby? Come over here and talk to me a little bit about progressive revenue. Look - here's what's happening. We have got probably the most movement that we have had in the last eight years from the State Legislature. They are finally finally listening when we say that Washington State is the worst - #50 in the country - when it comes to how we tax ourselves. We let the richest people get away with paying the least and we make the lowest income people pay the most - the highest percentage of their income in sales, property, and other taxes. So it is time to fix that. And it's also time to jumpstart our economy by putting a bunch more money in.  And here's how the Legislature says they want to do it. They want to tax the extraordinary profits that are being made on the stock market by the uber-rich - not your real estate, not your mom and pop small business, not even selling your yacht. If you sell a bunch of Amazon stock and you make - for every dollar over quarter million dollars. So quarter million dollars free. But when you start making money over a quarter million dollars, you've got to pay a modest tax of 7%. You would think though, that we were ripping people's eyelashes out because the amount of opposition that's coming out about this and hysteria has just been shocking. Nevertheless, State Senate just passed it 25-24, over the last weekend. It was a very long Saturday for me. And there's going to be a hearing on it in the House on Monday.  Crystal Fincher: [00:02:50] Yes, there is. Lots of people organizing and planning on attending the hearing on Monday. We will include information in the show notes about - if you want to make your voice heard - now is as easy a time as it's ever been to participate in the legislative process from home. And you don't even have to testify. You can just say, you know what? I just want noted on the record that I agree with this. I'm holding a pro position. Really simple and easy to do. We'll include links for how to do that. Meanwhile, we've got a hundred billionaires in the state who are just coasting and literally paying nothing. There is no income tax and so it is just letting people skate by.  Heather Weiner: [00:03:29] No, and right - and so they will tell you, Oh, well, we're going to move. We're going to go somewhere else. But that's not true. The data shows, I mean, look, 40 other states in the country already have capital gains tax, so where are you going to go? Idaho has a capital gains tax, people. Come on, we're letting Idaho beat us on this? So people saying that they might leave? No, not true.  So listen to this. The Washington Tech Industry Association, which is all the founders of all the big tech startups, they sent a letter signed by more than a hundred of these CEOs of these tech startups. I mean, these are companies that do really interesting things. Although some of them do things like trade Bitcoin. And what they said is, Ahh! You don't put a capital gains tax on us for childcare and early learning. It's gonna, it's gonna - we won't be able to bring smart people to Washington State for this. But it turns out PubliCola reports that over half of those CEOs scooped up federal taxpayer subsidies and money over the last year to subsidize their own freaking salaries. So here's what they're saying. No, no, no, no, no. We don't want to pay our share, but we'll be happy to take it.  Crystal Fincher: [00:04:34] As it has always been and using some of the old tired talking points that we're used to hearing whenever someone talks about raising the minimum wage, paying workers a living wage - that has been debunked and proven false every time it has happened. Seattle is actually the perfect place to look at, to see how the economy grows and expands when you pay workers more and you make sure people at the bottom are not neglected by people at the top - that we all have to pay our fair share. Heather Weiner: [00:05:06] As studies show that you - for every dollar that the government invests back into the economy, pays off $3 for our communities, for small businesses, to keep people employed, and to keep consumers with money in their pockets. It's so much better than having that money being hoarded in - up at the top. When - where do they put it? They put it into, you know, real estate in other countries, they put it into REITs, they put it all kinds of places. No, that money needs to be flowing through the economy and helping us rebound from this recession. So how's it - is it going to pass? What do you think Crystal? Crystal Fincher: [00:05:37] It is definitely gonna pass. They have the votes for it in the House. The big issue was the Senate, with capital gains. The House is more progressive than the Senate is. And it definitely took last election to get the Senate in the place, with a composition, to pass it. And it wasn't clear that it was going to pass until - really the last minute. This was not a vote that people knew which way it was going to go. Heather Weiner: [00:06:03] It was a tough Saturday for me. I definitely had a bottle of wine out by about 9:00 PM after watching all that Senate debate. But let me just give a shout out to my friend, Crystal Fincher. Because Crystal, one of the campaigns that you worked on actually ended up being key. I mean, elections matter people. Crystal, you worked on Senator Nobles' campaign. And because we elected Senator Nobles and replaced a conservative, Steve O'Ban , that helped change the makeup of the Senate where we finally did have enough votes to overcome and get that through.  This is the first step though. Look, it raises half a billion dollars a year from these extraordinary stock market profits. That's only 7% of extraordinary stock market profits - is a half a billion. So raises half a billion dollars a year for childcare, early learning, and taxpayer assistance - low-income taxpayer assistance. And that's just the first step. We need at least another $2-3 billion a year before we can start doing things like really helping low-income taxpayers and small businesses by reducing B&O and sales taxes and other things. First, we got to get the money into the system. Very excited about this. This is groundbreaking stuff. Elections matter. Let's do it.  Crystal Fincher: [00:07:16] Elections matter. And I'm so thrilled to have Senator Nobles in our Legislature and to just watch her leadership - and make a difference on a very consequential vote that is going to help people who needed the most. Moving over to the City and contrasting legislators and leaders coming through. One who has not been - who we've talked about on this program many times - Mayor Durkan. And this week and in "What is Mayor Durkan doing to antagonize people in the city and not meet basic needs of people? " Heather Weiner: [00:07:52] WTFMD. Crystal Fincher: [00:07:55] Is you know - we talk about funding being such a major problem. We talk about homelessness being such a major problem. She's talked about that and has talked about how we definitely need more funding. So it turns out FEMA's like, Hey, we have more funding over here. And Durkan was like, Nah.  Heather Weiner: [00:08:15] Doesn't want it.  Crystal Fincher: [00:08:16] Yeah. What is the deal? Heather Weiner: [00:08:17] Has been making a ton of excuses - really just putting up a bunch of roadblocks to not taking this money for non-congregate shelter. That means for people who are homeless, who would normally go to be offered shelter where there's many, many, many, many people in the room that's not COVID safe. And so what we've been trying to do for the last year is to try to get some FEMA money in, to pay for motel rooms where people could have some shelter and still be safe from COVID. San Francisco has taken in this money. Other cities are taking this money. But for some reason, this mayor has been really highly, highly resistant.  And so I was really pleased to see that Council President González - now full disclosure, I do a little bit of work with her on her campaign - but in her official capacity, called BS on this, and I'm just not going to wait around anymore and just went ahead and went over her head. Whatever the Mayor said, and just went right to FEMA and had her own meeting with FEMA, and then released a statement saying, I'm not going to accept these excuses anymore. We can and should do this. We have got to do it. So let's see if that gets the gates open and that's going to be a lot of fun.  Crystal Fincher: [00:09:26] Yeah, certainly. And her other colleagues on the Council have signaled that they certainly intend to pursue this funding and that that's something that we should be doing. We just recently talked with Erica Barnett about this, of PubliCola, and she's done a lot of reporting. There's a lot of great information you can find on this subject there, but it really is confusing. I mean, Mayor Durkan seems to make these decisions that don't have a connection to the people of Seattle. And I just wonder, who is she listening to for this advice where she thought it would be a good idea to not get additional funding to address what she has called the top problem facing the city she is in charge of governing.  Heather Weiner: [00:10:09] Yeah, we have this double emergency problem of the pandemic, which is, you know, I know that we're all feeling very optimistic, but we are still in the middle of a massive pandemic. And the massive emergency crisis of the lack of housing for everyone who needs it in the City of Seattle. So how do we address that issue? Eh, ignore it. Don't accept money from the federal government. I just don't get it.  Crystal Fincher: [00:10:34] Yeah. I mean, it's really confusing. And it's infuriating because this is a problem that we all should be invested in solving. We have to get people off the street and into shelter, and then we have to get people into permanent stable housing. And funding is certainly an issue for this. And you know, a lot of it comes down to priorities, but we do need more money. And if someone is willing to say, FEMA is willing to say, Hey, we can help out with this. We have a national interest in solving this problem , as we do at all levels of government, then we should take that. For no other reason than that gives us more money to address this problem or other problems. Heather Weiner: [00:11:17] Well, and you save lives. You're literally saving lives and saving money in terms of all the health care that needs to be done when people are outside, exposed to the elements, or exposed to COVID. Speaking of outside and being exposed, the other big news that's happening right now in the City of Seattle is the City Council passed a requirement that grocery stores like QFC pay their workers hazard pay. Just an extra $4 an hour, because they're having to pay for childcare while they're continuing to work. They themselves are under a lot of stress and they have been the frontline heroes - the grocery store workers have.  And Kroger, QFC's owner, instead of actually paying - not only do they sue to stop having to pay their own employees hazard pay. But then in retaliation, they close two stores in Seattle. They announced they're closing two stores in Seattle and blame hazard pay. They didn't just do that in Seattle. They just did it in LA this week - threatened to close two more stores. What a bunch of whiny bullies. What's going on there?  Crystal Fincher: [00:12:23] Whiny bullies and extremely disingenuous because this is happening in a backdrop of them being more profitable than they have been in quite some time during the pandemic. This has driven people to grocery stores because dining out is not as much of an option as it has been. People are buying more groceries. They're buying more at home, they're getting groceries delivered. And so they have seen windfall profits. This is not a situation where, as they've tried to spin it, our margins are razor thin and this is going to make the prices go up. They have been reaping profits during the pandemic. That's one of the dynamics - that the rich have gotten richer during the pandemic. And people who were hurting are hurting worse. And so all we're saying is that it is not possible for you to reap these profits without the risks that these people are taking on the front lines, to secure all that profit for you. They deserve a portion of that. What you're doing is not possible without that. They are putting themselves and anyone else in their households at greater risk in order to provide a service to the public. You're reaping windfall profits - a tiny percentage of that can go to the workers who made this possible. Heather Weiner: [00:13:36] Temporarily. Crystal Fincher: [00:13:37] And they've said, yeah, and it's not even permanent. It's temporary. And they said, I know I am receiving a multi-million dollar salary. And I know that we are letting our shareholders profit from this. But we must draw the line at the workers who were on the front lines. We cannot give them just a few more dollars, but we just can't, we can't afford it. We can't do it. It's a slippery slope, all of those arguments. It's ridiculous. And so they have decided that they're going to try and play hardball and say, Well, we're just going to close.  Heather Weiner: [00:14:13] Yeah. And so they, you know, look, Kroger made a billion dollars more in profits last year. They doubled the profits they made during so far during the pandemic. They made so much money that they then did a stock buyback, which means they bought a bunch of their shares back at massive increase in price from their shareholders. And the CEO, this guy, McMullen - Rodney McMullen - just made - makes $21 million a year in salary alone. And yet does not want to pay hardworking QFC workers an extra $4.  Now despite this kind of intimidation and bullying tactics, the King County Council voted to extend hazard pay to stores in the unincorporated parts of King County this week, which is great. So that's like White Center, um, and some of the other unincorporated -  Crystal Fincher: [00:15:04] Skyway yeah.  Heather Weiner: [00:15:05] Right. And Burien has already passed this. I hear that Auburn is thinking about passing it. Bainbridge is thinking about passing it. Bellingham. So there's lots of other places that will continue to do this. What's QFC going to do? Close every single one of its Fred Meyer and QFC stores? Come on. This kind of corporate bullying is really going to weaken their brand and in the long run hurts communities that need these grocery stores. Crystal Fincher: [00:15:29] Absolutely. And also we've seen PCC decide to make the $4 nationwide for all of their workers - and we can afford this right now, we've done quite well.  Heather Weiner: [00:15:44] Trader Joe's, which is a non-union grocery store has gone ahead and just given everybody across the country - all of their staff - hazard pay increases. I mean, come on. Crystal Fincher: [00:15:58] You're listening to Hacks and Wonks with your host Crystal Fincher on KVRU 105.7 FM. Heather Weiner: [00:16:08] All right. Well, which leads us now to vaccinations. I mean, so grocery store workers have been saying, we're on the front lines, we need to be vaccinated. Teachers are saying we have to be vaccinated before we go back to schools. But people haven't been talking very much about the people who've already been out there around customers without their masks on. And that's - restaurant workers.  Crystal Fincher: [00:16:28] It's restaurant workers. And we recently had some updates and guidance in eligibility.   It was recently announced by Governor Inslee that all teachers and childcare workers are now eligible to receive the vaccine. They announced that coming up in the next, I don't even have the exact date, but couple of weeks that frontline workers are going to be eligible for that. So grocery store workers and others, and they will deserve to be. But one group that is left out are restaurant workers. And restaurants are one of the only areas where even when masks are required, it's acceptable for people to take them off as they eat, because you can't eat with a mask on. And they're expanding now - the capacity in restaurants for reopening. So we still have a large percentage of the population unvaccinated. The risk is very present and real. And there are areas where people can congregate in even greater numbers now without wearing a mask. Why are restaurant workers not considered essential frontline workers? I hope that changes fairly soon.  Heather Weiner: [00:17:35] Yeah, I sure do too. As someone who lives with two people in the industry - I have, my best friend is a chef. And her wife is a somm. And the somm lost her job in March - last March, has been unemployed for a year. And my friend Becky continues to go to work and is exposed on a daily basis. Yeah. Very important. Let's go to some good news.  Crystal Fincher: [00:18:00] Good news. Good news is good. There is a lot happening in terms of elections. And we've certainly seen calls and demands and the necessity to broaden the voices who represent us in public office. We just talked about Senator Nobles, the only Black woman in the Senate right now. There was not one before she came in - immediately prior. So having more representation, broader representation, and empowering more people - sharing power with a more diverse set of people is - just helps us to be better represented across the board. And we are certainly seeing, a greater percentage, in particular, women of color, running for office across the board, which is really exciting. Heather Weiner: [00:18:52] Super exciting. It's amazing. I can't believe how many women of color are running for office in this year. And these are in municipal level elections - county and city level elections. But those are the jumping off places for a lot of people who then go on to run for Legislature or Congress. Here's where it gets hard - is when they start running against each other. Do you want to talk about some of the women of color who are running? Can we gossip about them?  Crystal Fincher: [00:19:17] We can, um, you know, lots of people are familiar with the women running in the City of Seattle. Certainly for Mayor, we have Lorena González, who's the sitting Seattle City Council President, who's running for mayor. Colleen Echohawk - also running for mayor.  Heather Weiner: [00:19:35] Smart, great woman.  Crystal Fincher: [00:19:36] Yeah. Teresa Mosqueda - running for her city-wide position for reelection. And then we have Brianna Thomas and Nikkita Oliver, who are running for the other city-wide seat, the one being vacated by Lorena González.  Heather Weiner: [00:19:53] So how do you - let's - how do you think this is going to play out with Brianna and Nikkita? Crystal Fincher: [00:19:59] I don't know.  Heather Weiner: [00:20:00] Oh my gosh. Listeners, you should have seen her face - the way she just threw her hands up in the air. Oh my gosh.  Crystal Fincher: [00:20:06] You know, it is - I have deep respect for both of them, and have known Brianna for quite some time, have worked alongside Brianna. Have admired and respected Nikkita for quite some time. But as we said before, it is not a bad thing for people to run against each other. And as I talk about a lot of times, if you are in political spaces in Seattle, which is, you know - basically elects Democrats and people to the left of Democrats. If you have friends in that space, it is inevitable that you are going to have friends or people that you respect and admire run against each other.  But certainly with Brianna, she has a lot of experience within the system. But she very much came from outside. She was instrumental to getting the first $15 an hour - Heather Weiner: [00:21:01] In SeaTac Crystal Fincher: [00:21:02] - ordinance passed, in the country. In SeaTac, before there was the 15 Now campaign that I think people think about. Before it happened in Seattle, it happened in SeaTac.  Heather Weiner: [00:21:14] Yup. I worked with her on that campaign.  Crystal Fincher: [00:21:16] Yes, you did.  Heather Weiner: [00:21:18] She was ah-mazing. She was the grassroots person and she just organized the heck out of that. Door knocking - I mean, there's really only 7,000 voters in SeaTac and I think every single one of them knows Brianna.  Crystal Fincher: [00:21:29] I think so.  Heather Weiner: [00:21:31] Oh gosh, here she is at my door again. That's true. The other thing that Brianna did, has done, I mean there's so many things. She also worked on the Democracy Voucher campaign and now - which is one of the reasons why Nikkita , and Colleen Echohawk, and Lorena, and Teresa are all able to run - is because Brianna helped to pass the Democracy Voucher campaign, by working on the campaign before she ever ran for office.  Crystal Fincher: [00:21:53] Yeah. And you know, I think it's an example of people working often in service of the same policy and with the same goal, but working in and using different methodsand different tracks. Because, you know, Nikkita certainly has been a voice of moral clarity. They have been instrumental in the push to defund the Seattle Police - to reduce the funding. And that, that is a critical piece. We cannot maintain funding or increase funding and expect things to change. But also in not stopping the conversation at defund or not, which a lot of the opponents like to just put that as, Would you believe in defunding? And that's not, that's not even - like that's just the start of the conversation. I think this is going to be a spirited and exciting time. And I also think the mayoral race is going to be really interesting and have some real substantive conversations. And two people who've done a lot of positive work.  Heather Weiner: [00:22:53] It sounds to me like what you're saying a little bit is , if you were to say what the main policy issues are that are going to be focused on during these campaigns.It almost sounds to me like you're saying, the big - the issue around police reform and the different ways to address police reform, are kind of symbolized by Brianna's - uh, you know, Nikkita has an abolitionist perspective and Brianna has a change the system, work within the system perspective. Uh, I'm probably misstating that. And then I would say between Colleen and Lorena, probably the biggest issue is going to be how to deal with homelessness. It's going to be really interesting policy debates. I can't wait to watch them.  Crystal Fincher: [00:23:31] Really interesting policy debates. And I am really wanting to hear - that there is, there is a lot of conversation to talk about how do you turn activism into policy? And that is not a simple and easy thing. And I think what we have seen in recent years is people who have been activists , and who have been on the front lines organizing and moving policy and campaigns elsewhere being elected into government, or being hired onto staff.  Heather Weiner: [00:24:01] Well, let's talk about some other cities, where there are people of - women of color running. Um, where else are they running?  Crystal Fincher: [00:24:07] Well, I mean, I will talk about the city of Kent where, there was a great South Seattle Emerald article, I think from this past Monday, about Dawn Bennett, who's running for mayor.  Running as a challenger against an incumbent mayor. Satwinder Kaur running for reelection on the City Council and another familiar name, Brenda Fincher, running for reelection on the Kent City Council.  Heather Weiner: [00:24:31] Do you - is there any relation?   Crystal Fincher: [00:24:33] She is my mom. She is a wonderful, kind woman. She's much more kind and compassionate than I am.  I am a fan of hers. But the progressives on that council are a minority. Um, and so it is notable and novel that we have three women of color running in the city of Kent. And  races in the suburbs oftentimes solidify later than races in big cities. So we've seen like tons of announcements in the city of Seattle. A lot of times in the suburbs that - we don't have a firm idea of exactly who's going to be in until filing week in mid May.  Hamdi Mohamed is running for the Port of Seattle. Lots of excitement about her. Shukri Olow is running for King County Council District 5. In Tacoma, there are a number of candidates - Kiara Daniels and Anne Artman for City Council, Chelsea McElroy for the School Board. There - just a lot of wonderful women of color running across the board. A lot of great Black women running. So I'm excited to continue to see women who have been leaders in their spaces to grow their power, and to grow power within their communities.  Heather Weiner: [00:25:47] Amazing. This is great. And is there any kind of group that people can go to if they want to support all of these women at once? Like, is there - are there any PACs or anything like that they could contribute to?  Crystal Fincher: [00:25:57] That's a great question. I don't necessarily know that - there are a whole slew of PACs, obviously. Persist PAC, who I've done some work with, who supported Black women running for office last year and SeaTac City Council candidates running for office the year before - is going to be involved in these races. So certainly keep an eye on Persist. Opportunity PAC is another PAC that has been in the space. If people are interested in running for office, supporting people for office, there is a training with the Northwest Women's Political - National Women's Political Caucus of Washington for that, that I would highly encourage people to attend. That link will be on the website and in the show notes, so absolutely.  And just a really exciting time. So I'm really excited to see how these continue to unfold. You know, it is sometimes an uncomfortable feeling when two people you like and respect, or more sometimes, run against each other. But really it's a sign that power is becoming more accessible and more attainable and that we can have these debates. We, as you pointed out, I've talked a lot about us not being a monolith. Um, you can't lump communities of color together. You can't lump the Black community together as if we all have the same opinion. But our varied opinions are important and it's important for that to be part of the national discourse , because we are. We are here, we exist and that's an important element, as it is with all communities.  So, and that's pretty much our time for today. But thank you once again for joining us today. I always love when you're on the show, Heather.  Heather Weiner: [00:27:36] Aww, I love chatting with you and gossiping with you. It's just - I always bring myself a cup of tea for this cup of tea.  Crystal Fincher: [00:27:44] Always fun. And the gossip is top notch with you always.  Thank you to everyone for listening to Hacks and Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM on this Friday, March 12th, 2021. Our chief audio engineer at KVRU is Maurice Jones Jr. The producer of Hacks and Wonks is Lisl Stadler. And our wonderful co-host today was Seattle political consultant, Heather Weiner. You can find Heather on Twitter @ hlweiner - that's W E I N E R. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii - that's F I N C H F R I I. And now you can follow Hacks and Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live show and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.

The heated debate over Seattle’s $4-an-hour hazard pay law for grocery workers escalated sharply this week.On Tuesday, QFC announced it would close two Seattle locations by April 24 — and blamed the move, in part, on the new law.Although QFC acknowledged that both locations — at 416 15th Avenue East on Capitol Hill and at 8400 35th Ave. NE in Wedgwood — were “underperforming,” the decision to close them was “accelerated” by Seattle’s hazard pay law, which the City Council approved Jan. 25.That law imposed new costs at a time when grocery stores “operate on razor-thin profit margins in a very competitive landscape,” the company said in a statement Tuesday. The law applies to grocery companies with more than 500 employees worldwide and to stores larger than 10,000 square feet during the coronavirus civil emergency.Join your host Sean Reynolds, owner of Summit Properties NW and Reynolds & Kline Appraisal as he takes a look at this developing topic.Support the show (https://buymeacoff.ee/seattlepodcast)

QFC is closing two Seattle stores, the massive power outages in Texas are causing a panic, and some good news for vaccine supply in the U.S./Rachel Belle joins the show to discuss our fascination with pet names/ Mike takes on the birds See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We took on all things Super Bowl. The history, commercials, half time shows, but the most importantly we talked FOOD! Donn Paul gave our listeners some easy delicious recipes that are a must have for super bowl parties. Then we talked about the Super Bowl with Adam Holts from Pluggedin.com, and he gave us some glorious movie recommendation and also some to stay away from. Where can listeners learn more about you and today's snack foods and recipes? o Find Southern Recipe Small Batch at WinCo and Cost Plus World Market. o Find ParmCrisps at Whole Foods, QFC and Safeway. o Listeners can play in “The Great Wonder Years” by visiting PorkRinds.com o Listeners can learn more on our websites. o https://southernrecipesmallbatch.com o https://parmcrisps.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/michelle-m-mendoza/message

We took on all things Super Bowl. The history, commercials, half time shows, but the most importantly we talked FOOD! Donn Paul gave our listeners some easy delicious recipes that are a must have for super bowl parties. Then we talked about the Super Bowl with Adam Holts from Pluggedin.com, and he gave us some glorious movie recommendation and also some to stay away from.   Where can listeners learn more about you and today's snack foods and recipes? Find Southern Recipe Small Batch at WinCo and Cost Plus World Market. Find ParmCrisps at Whole Foods, QFC and Safeway. Listeners can play in “The Great Wonder Years”by visiting PorkRinds.com Listeners can learn more on our websites. https://southernrecipesmallbatch.com https://parmcrisps.com

This week on the show Crystal is joined by co-host Erica Barnett, editor of Publicola. They get in to Mayor Durkan's floundering attempts to address homelessness, developments of the convention center bailout, and grocery store workers being granted a $4.00 and hour hazard pay increase. A full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Articles Referenced: Mayor's Office Defends Hotel Shelter Plan as Council Pushes for Tiny Houses by Erica C. Barnett, Publicola https://publicola.com/2021/01/28/mayors-office-defends-low-budget-for-hotel-shelters-as-council-pushes-for-tiny-houses/ Seattle, state look to join King County in multimillion dollar Washington State Convention Center bailout by David Gutman, The Seattle Times https://publicola.com/2021/01/28/mayors-office-defends-low-budget-for-hotel-shelters-as-council-pushes-for-tiny-houses/ The convention business is cratering, and cities are getting stuck with the bill by Mike McGinn and Joe Cortright, The City Observatory https://cityobservatory.org/the-convention-business-is-cratering-and-cities-are-getting-stuck-with-the-bill/ Seattle City Council approves $4 per hour mandatory pay boost for grocery workers during COVID-19 pandemic by David Gutman, The Seattle Times https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-city-council-approves-4-per-hour-mandatory-pay-boost-for-grocery-workers-during-covid-19-pandemic/ Seattle ‘hazard pay' bonus for grocery workers likely to begin next week by Ben Adlin, South Seattle Emerald https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/01/29/seattle-hazard-pay-bonus-for-grocery-workers-likely-to-begin-next-week/   Transcript: Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks and Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk with Policy Wonks and Political Hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host, Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse and Recovery, Erica Barnett. Erica Barnett: [00:00:49] Hi, Crystal. Great to be here.  Crystal Fincher: [00:00:51] Great to have you on again. Well there's a lot going on this week and I think we want to start out talking about Mayor Jenny Durkan's shelter surge plan that seems to be in trouble. What is the plan and what is happening with it?  Erica Barnett: [00:01:08] Well, the original plan was announced last year in October-ish. And it's to add a bunch of new shelters, mostly in hotels. The idea being that people will be taken off the street by outreach workers, put into hotels, and just sort of stabilize there - and move quickly to either permanent supportive housing which is a very kind of service-intensive, expensive kind of housing for people who can't live independently , or rapid rehousing using vouchers, essentially, that they can spend on the private market for a short period of time. And the idea is that they would then be able to pay market rate rent within a year or so. What's happening with it this week and as we reported exclusively at publiCola is that the plan is sort of or at least a large component of the plan - one of the big hotels - has fallen apart. And , and the city is scrambling to find somebody to provide those rooms. The issue is that the mayor's office and the city budget office have capped the amount that can be spent on these rooms at a rate that providers are saying is way too low for them to provide the kind of services that would actually make people ready to move into this market rate housing. And the difference, the money difference, is pretty significant. And so that - that larger of two hotels that they're planning, which is a 155-room hotel , has fallen through. And now they're scrambling to find a new provider. It was going to be the Public Defender Association, but - but no more. Crystal Fincher: [00:02:35] So they're at the point where they're saying they are getting ready to roll this out, and now they're down a provider. And the feedback that they've gotten from the providers that they're looking at moving forward with is that the money may be too low to actually provide the services and, and provide the outcomes that the program was supposed to provide? Erica Barnett: [00:02:59] Yeah, so the Public Defender Association does a program called JustCare, which got a lot of positive press. It's down in Pioneer Square in the Chinatown International District. And basically they - they cleared out a bunch of encampments there and moved people into hotels. And it's - it's an expensive program because you're talking about people who have really high needs, so they're providing behavioral health care, mental health care, addiction services. And and so the idea was to basically expand - at least the PDA's idea - was to basically expand that program. They're going to move it into the Executive Pacific hotel downtown. And this is all according to our reporting - the city has not actually said any of this publicly, but we've talked to the PDA. And they're saying we can't do this for $17,000 a bed, which is what the city is essentially willing to provide. You know, it costs - it costs about $28,000 - we need more money. And, and that's kind of where the impasse is - are we going to do this service-rich program that gets people ready to move into housing or are we going to do a low-budget program that, you know, we're just going to put people in hotels and move them on and hope for the best. I mean, I'm not saying that the whatever lower budget program they end up with, assuming this moves forward, is going to be a bad program, but it's going to not have all of the services that they were originally intending to provide when they started talking about this. Crystal Fincher: [00:04:21] One, and originally intending to provide - and that seemed to be necessary to successfully transition people out of homelessness into stable housing. You know, the, the goal of this, certainly, we want to get everyone off of, off of the streets , out of unsafe and unsheltered situations, and to have shelter first and foremost critically, but, but it is also important to provide people with the assistance that they need to transition into stable housing. And I guess the question is, as you referenced, there are different populations within the unhoused population. There are people who are recently homeless, who oftentimes just need some financial assistance to get back into a stable situation. Then there are people who have more , you know, intricate needs and more service needs, whether it's mental health issues, substance abuse issues, that, that really need those programs and support. So is there information on who our existing population is and, and does this solution work for them? Erica Barnett: [00:05:33] Well, I mean, what the - what the Public Defender Association has told me is that the JustCare clients that they've worked with have had very high needs. And, and I think you're - you hit on exactly the point. I mean, there is no one population of people who are unsheltered. But a lot of times when you're going into encampments and people who have been chronically homeless for a very long time and you know, are, are not going into the traditional shelters that are on offer, you're talking about people who do have high needs. And, and I think with anybody in the current housing market - I mean, yes, rents have gone down a little bit in Seattle, but anyone going into the current housing market with a rapid rehousing subsidy is going to need that subsidy for a really long time. And ordinarily, those are capped at three to six months. Now the city is saying they're willing to pay for more like a year, but - but then what happens when that year runs out? I mean, at that point as I've also reported, you know, you are expected to pay the full market rent for whatever apartment you've found and it's considered successful if you're paying 60% of your income on rent, which is very, very rent burdened. So there's just - there's just a lot of problems with the current sort of two tracks that we have, which are permanent supportive housing - very high needs, you're always going to have a subsidy for the rest of your life, or rapid rehousing - you know, 12 months and you better be on your feet and earning a high enough income to pay for that apartment. And there's not a whole lot for people who fall in between those two tracks.  Crystal Fincher: [00:07:03] But, you know, this seems to me - Jenny Durkan has certainly experienced criticism for not following through on the details or paying close attention to the implementation of her plans, and them not panning out as they were originally sold. This seems like it's heading in that same direction. What are the options that are available moving forward? Are they just trying to force it through as-is?  Erica Barnett: [00:07:30] Well, I think what they're doing is scrambling right now, as we're speaking, to find - to find another provider for that second hotel. And , and to - to maybe find a - there's actually supposed to be a third hotel. And so to maybe find a provider for that third hotel that'll, you know, altogether make up the 300 rooms that the mayor promised. But I want to pivot, if I can, to the tiny house village proposal that's on the table now, because you talked about Durkan making promises. She said in her campaign and, and during her first year, that in her first year, she would build a thousand new, tiny houses in villages around the city. So far, the city has less than 300 total and most of those aren't new. So Andrew Lewis on the council has proposed sort of on a totally separate track to build a 480 new tiny houses in 12 new villages around the city over a couple of years. And so that is another shelter option that's moving forward kind of without, without the, I mean, you know, with the mayor's cooperation, certainly, but the deputy mayor was talking at the council meeting the other day. And you know, he seemed to - just he was describing this as happening on a completely different track and, you know, and speculating about how it would work with the mayor's plans, which, you know, just really haven't gone anywhere as far as tiny house villages are concerned. Crystal Fincher: [00:08:53] Well, and, and Councilmember Lewis' plan is interesting and it looks like it is relying on a mix of city money, taxpayer money, and privately funded money - is that correct?  Erica Barnett: [00:09:05] Yeah, it would be city money for operations and private money for actually just the physical construction, you know - here's the land, money to build these these tiny house huts that people live in, and then, yeah - and then the city would pay for ongoing operations.  Crystal Fincher: [00:09:21] Okay. Well, I mean, it seems, at least it's - kind of the, the general conversation that has needed to move forward into more effective housing solutions. Even with the mayor's plan and where she originally started - it seems like that - and with the tiny houses, we are acknowledging that people need private spaces with shelter. That the big, huge congregate shelter settings are certainly not ideal and that hinder progress and the ability to get in a position where you can transition into more stable housing. Has that been an intentional focus? And are they looking at moving away from group shelters even more in the future? Erica Barnett: [00:10:03] Well, I think that that's a Council-Mayor difference in some ways. I mean, and there's - there's good and bad things about both approaches, right? I mean, on the one hand, everybody would prefer, I mean, pretty much universally - if you offer people tiny houses or hotels, they say yes, whereas if you offer people a bed in a shelter - and we are mostly doing enhanced 24/7 shelters now, so it's not so much the mat on the floor model and get out at 7 in the morning anymore - but people don't like those as much, for what I think are very obvious reasons. Which is that, you know, you have privacy, you have some dignity, you have a door that closes . On the flip side, I will say, that when you have - when you invest really heavily in these programs, you're investing in a program where people don't move out into housing very quickly. They tend to stay in tiny house villages for a really, really, really long time. And so there's not a lot of what they call throughput. And so, so the question is, you know, in my mind, is are we building, essentially, a, you know, an inferior form of semi-permanent housing by putting tiny house villages all over the city and sort of avoiding the larger issue, which is that people actually need permanent housing. I mean this isn't to demonize tiny house villages in any way, because I think they are obviously really desirable to people. But I think that one of the reasons they're desirable is they're kind of a quasi-form of housing. And you know, I don't know - I don't know that we want to be a city and you know, I'm gonna get in trouble for saying this, but where it's just Hoovervilles everywhere and no housing. Like there needs to be housing to move people into.  Crystal Fincher: [00:11:35] Well, there does and I guess that - that brings up the question you talked about - the city money being used for services. Are those services the types that have shown to be effective for transitioning people into permanent housing? Erica Barnett: [00:11:47] Are you talking about the hotel - the services in the hotels? Crystal Fincher: [00:11:50] The services for the, the tiny house villages. Are there going to be services provided there or is it just, Hey, here's a tiny house and, and we will leave. Erica Barnett: [00:11:59] Oh, absolutely. No - there's case management and they, and they certainly provide services. I mean, this is also the case with JustCares, which is hotel rooms. That's another option that people stay in for, for a long time. And I think it's not - the problem is not so much that the services aren't there and that - because people do stabilize in these situations where they have some privacy and they have some dignity. People get better in, you know, in their lives. But the main - the, you know, the overriding condition of homelessness, I mean, you're just never gonna address that unless you create permanent housing solutions. And I don't mean permanent supportive housing for everybody. I mean, things like long-term subsidies. I mean, there's a lot of people in this city, as we've seen with, you know, the eviction moratorium. There's a lot of people who just can't pay that last $500 a month. You know, or $200 a month or whatever it is, that's keeping them from, from, you know, from staying in their places and that's making them subject to eviction. You know, I don't know why this is something that the city has been so reluctant to do. I think it's 'cause rapid rehousing is just in vogue right now because it feels like a market-based solution. But when you're throwing people under the market, there's no safety net really if , if they fail.  Crystal Fincher: [00:13:06] That's definitely true. Well, I think that - well, I think your coverage on this, on publicola.com has been excellent. And I encourage people to continue to follow along with where this process is going and provide feedback to the council and to the mayor about how you feel about how this plan is proceeding. Are there any conversations about increasing the amount that's available per room, or is the mayor just saying, That's it, - you gotta make it work.  Erica Barnett: [00:13:36] Well, this is all - this is all happening, I should say, sort of internally right now at the city. The mayor's office will probably be willing to give a little bit. But the other day - there's this really interesting moment in the council meeting where Deputy Mayor Casey Sixkiller was saying that the - the DESC in Renton, Downtown Emergency Service Center - which has a hotel in Renton that they have - that they're using as a shelter is able to do it for super cheap so that's the baseline for what should happen in Seattle. And there's just - there's so many things wrong with that, with that line of thinking. I mean, one is that he's not comparing apples to apples in terms of what that money is paying for in Renton. The other is that Seattle is more expensive. And the other is that DESC actually put forward its own plan - and its own plan for this hotel in Seattle was much, much more expensive and very much in line with all the other plans that everybody else submitted for , for these hotels. So I think the providers are saying, Look, this actually does cost more money than you are saying that we can spend. And the mayor's office, the city budget office is saying, You know, sorry, but we need that money for rapid rehousing because the rapid rehousing component of the hotel shelter plan is about twice as much as , as the services component. So they're, they're spending pretty lavishly on rapid rehousing to kind of get people into apartments fast, but the sort of step zero of, you know, helping people with their behavioral health issues, helping people with , you know, all kinds of barriers to housing that people have , is just, is, is being kind of not invested in Crystal Fincher: [00:15:12] Just a reminder that you're  listening to Hacks and Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher, and today we have a guest co-host, Seattle political reporter, Erica Barnett. Part of the other issue with the DESC benchmarking it off of that was, was also - we want to pay people living wages. Seems like the focus is on just, Well, we just need to get people in - I'm sure the promise that she made is weighing heavily on her and the ability to say, All right, fine - there's more - we did it. I'm delivering what I said I would - is a motivating factor.  Well, we will continue to keep our eye on that and we'll transition to talking about the bailout of the convention center. Dow Constantine - I feel like it was about six weeks ago -  you know, somewhere around then, announced that he, from the County perspective, had put together a plan for a massive bailout of the convention center that is ailing and struggling. Obviously in this pandemic, there are not companies coming from across the country and internationally - to fly all their people in and have big conventions together. So they are struggling and the question is - looking forward, are they going to bounce back and be able to make good on these on, on basically this, this loan? And furthermore, does it even make sense to continue to invest in the convention center? Are we going to see a long-term shift in the way that, that these types of conventions have been? What's going on with that right now?  Erica Barnett: [00:16:51] Well, the the city, I mean, you've, you've basically laid out what the situation is. I mean, the city and state have both said that they are open to providing loans to , to bail out the convention center even further. The boosters of convention centers say that they are critical for the region's economy and they're where, you know, tourism comes from, and people could, you know, they can cite however many, you know, people come in here. I mean, it feels a lot like , like the way that boosters sell arenas - that they make their money back in the overall benefit to the economy from people coming into the city, et cetera, et cetera. I am not aware of a lot of research that backs that up. Admittedly, I'm not an expert on convention centers, but I think that by and large, the reason that people come to a city like Seattle is not to - what - to sit in, you know, a windowless meeting room. And that a lot of that stuff is being done online now and I think will continue to be done online. I mean, if you're talking about a large meeting of a you know, of the business affiliation group, for example, or a large meeting of a company - I think there are a lot of lessons that we've learned during the pandemic that are going to continue and persist after the pandemic. And one is that we don't need these large, you know, giant gatherings. And I think the city really should be promoting tourism in a way that is about what is good about Seattle, not, you know, this is a great place to have your convention because of this and such tax breaks or hotel breaks or whatever it may be. But this is a great city because of the outdoors, because of Pike Place Market, you know, et cetera, et cetera. There's lots of, there's lots of reasons to come visit Seattle. I don't think that giant conventions are by and large gonna continue to be among those in the future.  Crystal Fincher: [00:18:37] Beyond that, we are in a recession, which you know, doesn't have prospects of getting better anytime soon without any stimulus activity . Started at the federal level, which is looking bleak beyond the little $2,000 amount that they are talking about as a one-time thing. And so even, even companies' ability, even if they wanted to continue to do that, has been hampered. The convention center is in need of - they're saying a $315 million loan in order to be bailed out. The County started and said, Hey, we'll, we'll be in for a $100 million from its investment pool. And they're hoping to be paid back through hotel tax revenues from another industry that is definitely struggling. Erica Barnett: [00:19:26] I think that , you know, even if you look beyond - I mean, because I do think that it's important to look beyond, you know, current recessions and look at , you know, just kind of the, the ongoing, you know, up and down of the economy and, and assume that we will come back at some point. But even then, I mean, I would really like to know and I, and I haven't seen this, this analysis done - what would be the impact if we stopped? If we just - if we stopped building it . The argument for - from labor, for the convention center, you know, has been that it will create a lot of jobs in the short-term. And okay. So let's, let's count up what the impact of that is and then what will be the ongoing long-term impact? You can even make it the worst case scenario, you know, take it from the point of view of the convention center itself and, and, and just figure out what, what if we stop ? Because I think there is this tendency with huge projects to just keep going with the forward momentum. Because you know, we've already invested so much money, so we have to keep going, we have to keep going no matter what. Just pour, pour, pour more money into it. And and I, and I do think that the stop option is not one that we even consider because it just feels impossible. And, and I think that, you know, I, I think that the region should just take a breath and consider whether we need to keep pouring sort of infinite buckets of money into this one project in downtown Seattle that that so many people have staked so much so much on sort of mentally, emotionally , financially . You know, and maybe the answer would be, No, we absolutely have to keep going because we're almost there and it just needs this little push, but, but let's, let's find that out and let's just take a pause instead of sort of all these panicked infusions of money, which is what it feels like. And these are, these are loans, but you know, it is not unprecedented for loans not to be paid back. I mean, if, if the convention center fails you know, that is, that is a possibility. And so when the city, state, and county say, Well, these are all repayable loans and we'll, we'll make interest on them. You know, I think we need to consider that that is not a sure thing. Crystal Fincher: [00:21:28] It's definitely not a sure thing. And, and part of the, the consideration of spending, especially, you know, providing public loans is - is what is the benefit and what is you know, will it, what activity does it stimulate? How much money can we generate from this loan? And you want that to be moving in a positive direction and to have multiplier effects. And that we'll wind up further ahead in the long-term if we provide this loan right now. And it just doesn't appear that that is a solid calculation with this. But we will see - again, encourage people to continue to stay engaged with this. As always, we'll be putting links to articles and information about these in our show notes that accompany the podcast. So you will be able to get more information there. But it's certainly a challenge. But speaking of helping workers, there is a - in my view - was a very positive step taken this week. And that was by providing grocery workers with hazard pay. What ended up happening and what did the council approve?  Erica Barnett: [00:22:37] From what I understand - and I apologize, I did not cover this specific , this specific initiative because I was sort of deep in in homelessness land this week. But the upshot, as I understand it, is that grocery stores, which are defined as, you know, stores over a certain size that are, that sell groceries. Or stores over another certain size that sell, you know, 30% or something like that, of their , of what they sell, is groceries. So, so big grocery stores have to pay $4 more an hour to their workers because of evidence that, you know, well, first of all, they're essential workers. They are providing food that people, you know, obviously rely on - the grocery stores are necessary and these workers are putting themselves in harm's way. They get COVID at a higher rate. And so so this is, this, this is, you know, as, as the legislation says, it's hazard.  Crystal Fincher: [00:23:24] Yeah, absolutely. And, and it is Seattle grocery businesses with 500 or more total employees that qualify for this. So most of the grocery stores - and as we continue to learn, as, as we get further in the pandemic, just being indoors is a risk factor. And as customers, we can, you know, go in and go out. But, but they're forced to be indoors for, you know, hours and hours at a time. And so this is a recognition that they are facing an increased risk and they do deserve increased pay because of that.  Erica Barnett: [00:24:00] I totally agree. And, and slash, but I would say, you know, it does , it does feel like when we see these kind of one-off pieces of legislation that pick one category of worker , one category of essential worker ,to receive hazard pay or to receive benefits that absolutely makes sense and that are absolutely rightful. I don't know where grocery workers come from specifically as opposed to hardware store workers or other retail or garden store workers. You know, other retail workers who are also, you know, inside all day, coming into contact with people all day in the same conditions as grocery workers. And so it's , it's a little frustrating to me watching legislation being made in this way, because if the, if the conditions are the issue, let's make it across the board for every large business over a certain amount of employees, say , and that has employees that are in X condition, you know, standing at a checkout counter all day or in the indoors all day, you know, with a certain number of customers coming through. It seems to me that it is, it is very strange that I can go down the street to my QFC and the grocery workers there are rightfully getting $4 an hour more, and then I can go to Lowe's across the street and those workers aren't because they don't sell groceries there. So I just, I think if the issue is the condition - let's address the condition. If the issue is , is that people are being exposed to COVID let's, let's let's address that. Otherwise it feels a little bit like you know, like legislation being made at the behest of a particular, a particularly effective lobbying effort. And, you know, and I, I just, I don't, I don't want to see legislation being made based on lobbying. I want to see it being made based on, on, on science and fairness. Crystal Fincher: [00:25:54] Any person working in a retail or customer-facing environment that has to be indoors in that shared space should be receiving hazard pay. You know, the delivery drivers who are, who are interacting with us, bringing food and groceries and, and, you know, delivering packages and goods - in my view, deserve hazard pay. You know, this is a time when, when many people are fortunate enough to not have to have higher exposure to the virus. And we are counting on people to do that in our place in order to, you know, continue our quality of life, really. And so I think that's a very valid point. I do know that there has been data cited specifically for grocery workers. Now, whether that data is also a function of you know, industry supported research that others may not have access to is a very valid question.  Thank you for listening to Hacks and Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM this Friday, January 29th, 2021. Our chief audio engineer at KVRU is Maurice Jones, Jr. The producer of Hacks and Wonks is Lisl Stadler. And our wonderful co-host today was Seattle political reporter and founder of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericabarnett and on publicola.com. And you can buy her book Quitter: a Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery at wherever your favorite bookstore sells books. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, and now you can follow Hacks and Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts, just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. And as always, full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time. .

Ron Alvarado Co-founded Ficks Beverage Co, the leading manufacturer of better-for-you bar products with its line of pure fruit juice hard seltzers and wellness-focused cocktail mixers. They are based in San Francisco, California, and currently expanding their two main products to national retailers such as Whole Foods, H-E-B, Target, QFC, BevMo, and Safeway. Ron and his co-founder, Mike, have been perfecting their craft since their college days, experimenting and brewing in their small studio apartment. They were obsessed with the challenge of creating the best tasting drinks solely using all-natural ingredients. Join our

Andy's pranks go too far. Dan tests the boiz' prayers. Tyler gets spliced in. Nam considers his first shitty yelp review. All our guests have tv credits.  try not 2 cum.

On Business as Usual, we welcome Sheikha Alanoud al-Thani, Managing Director, Business Development at the Qatar Financial Centre. Sheikha will outline the opportunities in Qatar for tech companies to reach markets, investment and other opportunities in the Middle East. The Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) was created as a financial and business centre designed to attract international banking, insurance and other financial services. With the aim of developing and expanding the financial services sector in Qatar, the QFC’s main objective was to foster the growth of both local and international firms within the banking, asset management and insurance sphere, while providing a legal and regulatory structure that met international best practice.

QFC, Fred Meyer, and parent company Kroger have banned employees from wearing Black Lives Matter (BLM) buttons at work. The employees are pressuring back their employers.Join your host Sean Reynolds, owner of Summit Properties NW and Reynolds & Kline Appraisal as he takes a look at this developing topic.

SDSA's Queer and Feminist Caucus (the “QFC”) recently started a new series called the Labor History Happy Hour, where they investigate and discuss the role of women and LGBTQ+ folk in the history of labor struggles. Joshua got to chat with two members of the QFC, Takeshi and Katie, about the new series and the subject of the first installment: the Pawtucket Mill strike of 1824. Pawtucket, America's First Factory Strike, By Joey La Neve DeFrancesco: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/06/factory-workers-strike-textile-mill-women We Are All Very Anxious, By weareplanc: https://www.weareplanc.org/blog/we-are-all-very-anxious/ SDSA calendar to find next QFC Labor History Happy Hour: https://seattledsa.org/events/ Follow us on Twitter: @CSZ_Pod Email us: CascadiaSolidarityZone@gmail.com Cascadia Solidarity Zone is an independent media project and does not represent the official views or positions of SDSA.

It’s National Donut Day and we are all about the giant king-sized maple bar that QFC brought by for our Friday Bull-Yah! In the What Are You Kidding Me stories, Australia’s Prime Minister politely asks a crowd “get off his lawn” because he just reseeded it, a couple is arrested for faking the wife’s disappearance, crotchless jeans are a thing, and police respond to a texting fight. On Stream it or Skip It Drew recommends the latest movies and TV show dropping this weekend on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO and Disney+ like “13 Reasons Why Final Season” and “A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood”. In the Hourly Bulletin, seventh night of protesting is peaceful, new coronavirus testing sites are open in Seattle, 90,000 workers are still held up for unemployment benefits for Fraud ID verification, and WSP captures a Seattle murder suspect speeding through Kittitas County. Drew had an embarrassing moment at a Drive-Thru when his car seat broke. In the Fitz Files, Morgan Wallen shuts down his Twitter, the Geico Ratt commercial puts “Round and Round” back on the charts and Kane Brown drops a beautiful new song “Worldwide Beautiful” with proceeds to Boys and Girls Clubs. In The Good Stuff, a soldier surprises his mother after 18 months overseas and a little boy runs around excited because his daddy also comes home from overseas. Scotty McCreery calls and talks about what Fitz calls the Musical DNA of his song “In Between”. We need your Insta-Therapy help for P1 Jeremy from Tacoma who has a female best friend who wants to be “more” but he doesn’t. Fitz can’t believe how huge his pregnant wife has gotten and talks about the size of his twin babies and plans for help when they arrive. Know-it-Alls Drew and Claire played trivia with teams from our company with mixed results. Believe It or Not includes Kirstin with an eerie birthmark and Jesse who won “The Price is Right”. The Weekend Party Preview includes newly opening Farmers Markets, Free Fishing Weekend and yes, Skiing!

Are you stretching all wrong? Is that food friend or foe? Three easy steps to start a change in your life!TRAININGNotes:There are two types of stretching: static (no motion) or dynamic (with motion). Flexibility is the range of motion around a joint, whereas stretching reflects the actual deformation of tissue. Stretching is just one form of flexibility training –weight training is another! Research shows that the most effective way to add range of motion is by using proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) stretching, particularly the contract-relax, antagonist-contract (CRAC) method.This method basically involves intermittent contractions of 6 to 8 seconds while stretching. Do as many sets as it takes to reach your maximum for the day (normally around 2 to 5 sets). PNF summary: 6-8 second contractions at about 25% effort and 2 to 5 sets (length it takes to reach your max) A good example is the Frankenstein stretches we use in some of the QFC warmups, and the butt kicks and the knee highs.Summary1) Dynamic: Before training2) PNF: Before and during3) Static: During or after, not before (unless specific reason, e.g. relaxation, antagonist, or non-worked muscles.NUTRITIONThree questions to ask before you eat that food!1. Can I digest this food easily? Pay attention to how you feel after you eat and adjust accordingly. Sometimes an immune response to a food takes a while to fully develop and it’s not until the next day that you feel fatigued or ill.2. Is this food a high-quality protein? Protein is important! It raises your metabolism, causes the release of gut hormones that keep you satisfied, helps manage blood sugar and insulin, decreasing cravings for sugar.All protein sources are not created equally. High-quality protein is defined as a protein source that provides at least 10 grams of essential amino acids (EAAs).  Make it your goal to Get 10 grams of EAAs per meal by planning your diet around a high-quality protein source from eggs, fish, meat, or dairy.BONUS: Want to get rid of belly fat?Research shows that people who eat the 10-gram-threshold dose of EAAs per meal have less visceral belly fat and a lower body fat percentage than those who eat poorer quality protein.3. Is this food high in nutrients?Eating processed, low nutrition foods can cause more problems than you think! Too many low nutrition foods can damage your metabolism, cause fat gain, increase depression and excess fatigue. These foods usually have too much sugar, which messes with your blood sugar levels and makes you feel tired, sluggish and wanting more sugar! A viscous cycle!Select high nutrient foods as your mainstays. Your best bet is to eat real, whole foods, such as meat, fish, eggs, whole-fat dairy, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and beans. Limit or avoid processed foods for a better body and better health.MOTIVATIONStuck in a rut? Its time for you to change!Do you ever find yourself repeating the same actions and expecting different results?  Maybe when it comes to losing weight?The definition of insanity is "doing the same things over and over and expecting different results."ARE YOU INSANE???!!!If you're still struggling with your weight, with losing body fat, then it's time to CHANGE!! I'm going to share with you a guide to help you get out of a rut and get on track! Here's three small steps that can give you a big jump start! You'll find more in this in my book, Motivation Mindset and in our workshops we call these "Strategy Sheets."   Question #1: Ask yourself, “What is holding me back?” Write it down! And be real! Many things that may appear to be holding you back are just excuses. but you won't be able to see this until you write it down  and look at it more objectively! Question#2: Ask yourself if you've had any of these thoughts lately, and answer them with a yes or no:I want to improve my self-confidence. I want to gain control of my habits and thoughts, especially toward weight loss. I want to end the diet cycle.I want to be more successful in weight loss, exercise and all areas of life! Question#3: Ask yourself, then answer with Yes or No:Do you find yourself overloaded with responsibilities to others? Do you feel like you sacrifice your own health and sanity? Are you expected to maintain a household, raise and teach children, earn money and see to the daily mundane tasks before you take care of yourself? Do you feel overwhelmed, with no end in sight?Are you ready to change?  If you answered "Yes" to alot of the items in questions #2 and 3, then you are ready for a change! More on that in a future podcast!Other updates and news: 1. New Video Series: QuickFit Tips on Youtube Channel If you didn't know already, I've been posting QuickFit tips videos on the Getfittv channel on YouTube. These videos aren't long, but are packed with useful info, tips and suggestions! I plan on posting these weekly, so hit the subscribe button when you're watching! 2. 100% NEW QuickFit Club finally complete! This seemed to take the longest! The workouts were the easy part, but the website.....OMG! But after three total redos, the site has everything I wanted! You'll hear more about it on the podcast but here are some of the things I'm excited about:1. Social login (so much easier, right?!)2. Quickfit Workout Plans3. Some free workout videos!4. Nutrition information5. More things that we'll be adding but for now, everything works perfectly! 3. Personal Stuff: More work on my house and an interruption by Hurricane!1. Of course, I'm also renovating a house by myself, you can see some of the progress at fitnessmakeover.com/house.....yes there is still much to update that I've done and much more for me to do!2. Hurricane Matthew took two weeks of my life! The week before, was prep-getting out the shutters, figuring all that stuff out and trying not to kill myself in the process! Then putting things back to normal. Alot of missed workouts in October!!3. Unfortunately, the events of October threw off my plan for competition. Sure, I did some heavy lifting (of a golf cart and other things) but not my usual workouts. So, I'll be revising that goal, but I will still do a competition soon! And probably a video log during prep too.I'm doing my best to stay on schedule with podcasts once a week, Setting up Quickfit live chats once a week and QFTips once a week! That's a big endeavor for me to tackle, so please be kind and patient!All for now!Kira Get all the most recent episodes on iTunes or download this episode here: FIT 243 Stretch vs Flexibility, Nutrition, How to Make a Change in Your Life! Now available in paperback: "Mindset Makeover," available at The Book Patch.com. Amazon.com Widgets

Nam injures his back. Tyler explains the blue lights at QFC. Andy gives Dan some pain pill hacks.  All our guests have TV credits. 

Good day, love. This week we wrestle with long response times from journals *cough* Tin House *cough cough*, and sit down with one of our favs Quenton Baker over New Formalist Old Fashioneds. QUENTON BAKER is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. His current focus is anti-blackness and the afterlife of slavery. His work has appeared in Jubilat, Vinyl, Apogee, Poetry Northwest, Pinwheel, and Cura and in the anthologies Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters and It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Southern Maine and is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He is a 2017 Jack Straw Fellow and a former Made at Hugo House fellow, as well as the recipient of the 2016 James W. Ray Venture Project Award and the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. He is the author of This Glittering Republic (Willow Books, 2016). NEW FORMALIST OLD FASHIONED: Like the poets in the late 20th and early 21st century who tried to put a modern spin on traditional metrical forms and rhyme schemes, we've revamped Don Draper's favorite cocktail with rye whiskey, cardamom bitters, and a dash of orange blossom water. The NFOF is perfect for those looking for a spicier, more botanical take on this classic sip. Stir, don't shake, and serve over ice in a short, stemless glass. Pairs well with floral hoodies, QFC muhammara dip, and our episode with Quenton Baker. INGREDIENTS: 2 oz rye whiskey (we used Templeton); 4 drops cardamom bitters; a dash of orange blossom water; a smidge of simple syrup; orange peel garnish   REFERENCES: This Glittering Republic and Ballast (a Frye Art Museum Exhibit) by Quenton Baker; Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and 20th-Century American Poetry by Lorenzo Thomas; Dante Micheaux; Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America by Saidiya Hartman; Fred Moten; Gwendolyn Brooks; Henry "Box" Brown; Olio by Tyehimba Jess; Phillis Wheatley; Citizen by Claudia Rankine

We ran out of superlatives talking about Fishtown restaurant Suraya on this edition of the show. Simply put, if you love food - and you listen to us, so we think you do - then try to make a visit ASAP. Period. Full stop. And later in the show, the Jawn Appetit duo makes their... 2020 Grammy picks?

The Podworms break out their NPR voices again in this week's intimate episode! Despite his unyielding appreciation for QFC grocery and its prepared lunch items, Andrew lays down the law with some suggestions to improve the purchasing experience. Phil tells stories about the pinching pennies at the dump and demands top dollar (or equal value in trade) from a craigslist buyer for his used electronics. The boys round out the episode with a classic game of NSRG. 

Edição de 08 Maio 2015

This week we have a new feature, Quest For Clicks, from Taylor. It’s about adventure games (which are not dead!). The first QFC is about Adventure Game Studio and the amazing world of freeware independent adventures. In News Conference we talk about the media circus surrounding Anders Brevik and the reaction from writer John Walker. Finally in Personal Choice we mash up two games to make one fantastic creation.