on this day … 1789 – The first U.S. Congress began regular sessions at the Federal Hall in New York City.


1199 – English King Richard I was killed by an arrow at the siege of the castle of Chaluz in France.

1607 – An expedition led by Captain Christopher Newport arrived at the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico for supplies before continuing on their journey. On May 14, they went ashore and founded Jamestown, Virginia, as the first permanent English colony in America.

1652 – Jan van Riebeeck established a settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.

1789 – The first U.S. Congress began regular sessions at the Federal Hall in New York City.

1814 – Granted sovereignty in the island of Elba and a pension from the French government, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates at Fountainebleau. He was allowed to keep the title of emperor.

1830 – Joseph Smith and five others organized the Mormon Church in western New York.

1830 – Relations between the Texans and Mexico reached a new low when Mexico would not allow further emigration into Texas by settlers from the U.S.

1862 – The American Civil War Battle of Shiloh began in Tennessee.

1865 – At the Battle of Sayler’s Creek, a third of Lee’s army was cut off by Union troops pursuing him to Appomattox.

1875 – Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the multiple telegraph, which sent two signals at the same time.

1896 – The first modern Olympic Games began in Athens, Greece.

1903 – French Army Nationalists were revealed for forging documents to guarantee a conviction for Alfred Dryfus.

1909 – Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson claimed to be the first men to reach the North Pole.

1916 – Charlie Chaplin became the highest-paid film star in the world when he signed a contract with Mutual Film Corporation for $675,000 a year. He was 26 years old.

1917 – The U.S. Congress approved a declaration of war on Germany and entered World War I on the Allied side.

1924 – Four planes left Seattle on the first successful flight around the world.

1927 – William P. MacCracken, Jr. earned license number ‘1’ when the Department of Commerce issued the first aviator’s license.

1931 – “Little Orphan Annie” debuted on the NBC Blue network.

1938 – The United States recognized the German conquest of Austria.

1941 – German forces invaded Greece and Yugoslavia.

1945 – “This is Your FBI” debuted on ABC radio.

1953 – Iranian Premier Mossadegh demanded that the shah’s power be reduced.

1957 – Trolley cars in New York City completed their final runs.

1959 – Hal Holbrook opened in the off-Broadway presentation of “Mark Twain Tonight.”

1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized the use of ground troops in combat operations in Vietnam.

1967 – In South Vietnam, 1,500 Viet Cong attacked Quangtri and freed 200 prisoners.

1981 – A Yugoslav Communist Party official confirmed reports of intense ethnic riots in Kosovo.

1983 – The U.S. Veteran’s Administration announced it would give free medical care for conditions traceable to radiation exposure to more than 220,000 veterans who participated in nuclear tests from 1945 to 1962.

1985 – William J. Schroeder became the first artificial heart recipient to be discharged from the hospital.

1987 – Dennis Levine began a two-year jail term for insider trading.

1987 – The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 2,400 for the first time.

1987 – Sugar Ray Leonard took the middleweight title from Marvin Hagler.

1988 – Mathew Henson was awarded honors in Arlington National Cemetery. Henson had discovered the North Pole with Robert Peary.

1997 – Mario Lemieux (Pittsburgh Penguins) announced that he would retire from the National Hockey League (NHL) following the playoffs of the current season.

1998 – Citicorp and Travelers Group announced that they would be merging. The new creation was the largest financial-services conglomerate in the world. The name would become Citigroup.

1998 – The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 9,000 points for the first time.

1998 – Federal researchers in the U.S. announced that daily tamoxifen pills could cut breast cancer risk among high-risk women.

1998 – Pakistan successfully tested medium-range missiles capable of attacking neighboring India.

a message from rep patrick murphy


 

What’s going on in Washington regarding the investigation into Trump’s Russia ties is unprecedented — and should be concerning for all Americans. 
I shared my thoughts with the Miami Herald’s opinion page over the weekend. Here’s what I had to say:
The sense of comity and duty that characterizes the House Intelligence Committee, on which I was honored to serve during my time in Congress, crumbled this week after Chairman Devin Nunes took several harmful actions.
The news that he canceled this week’s hearings — preventing former acting attorney general Sally Yates from testifying in the Trump-Russia matter — makes it clear he can no longer impartially chair the committee.
Following testimony by FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers confirming they were looking into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Nunes took an abrupt meeting with sources at the White House who informed him that Trump staffers may have had their communications incidentally collected. Instead of bringing this information to the ranking member and full committee, he brought it to the President alone before alerting other members.
Nunes is clearly still wearing the hat of Trump surrogate and transition team member, not chairman of one of the House’s most prestigious committees. Further, Trump now feels “vindicated” in his completely baseless claim that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
The cancellation of this week’s meetings is terrible for national security. Our adversaries will not take a break while Nunes and the White House get their stories straight. The committee’s current slate is long and urgent: North Korean nukes; radicalization efforts by ISIS; worldwide cyber threats.
The integrity of the committee and the agencies it funds is of utmost importance, but partisan politics has stopped its serious work.
It is time for an independent investigator to take over the inquiry of ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. And for the sake of national security, it is time for Chairman Nunes to go.
Thank you for standing with me as we fight, together, for answers and accountability in Congress.
— Patrick

BossFeed Briefing from Working Washington


We are Working Washington

BossFeed Briefing for April 3, 2017. The Washington State House introduced a budget proposal last Monday which included start-up funding for paid family leave. In Washington, DC, a Senate committee voted on Thursday to advance the nomination of Alexander Acosta to be the next Secretary of Labor. And tomorrow marks the anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 



Not a real person 

Luddites
PHOTO: Tom Morgan / Mary Evans Picture Library, via Smithsonian Magazine

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Three things to know this week:

bank The two richest people in the world both live in Washington State. After some recent financial transactions, Jeff Bezos of Amazon moved up to number two with $75.6 billion, passing Warren Buffett but about $10 billion short of Bill Gates.

snowman Ads are running in several key states highlighting the notorious “Frozen Trucker” opinion issued by Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. In that case, which has no relationship to the Disney movie, Gorsuch held that a trucking company had the right to fire a driver who left an unsafe trailer in order to find warmth and avoid hypothermia after several hours in subzero temperatures.

phone Portable benefits continue to make progress. A work session was held last Monday in the Washington State legislature on a bill which would establish a statewide system of portable benefits for contracted workers. A bill which would establish portable benefits is expected to be introduced in the U.S. Senate as well.

 

***********************************************************************

Two things to ask:

rolling eyes Would more income mean less poverty? That’s one of the hypotheses researchers hope to explore in an upcoming pilot project to provide a Universal Basic Income in a few communities in Ontario, Canada. Somehow it’s not considered a rhetorical question.

fingers Did anyone ask if she was crossing her fingers? During her election campaign, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh promised that she would sign a $15 minimum wage into law. When she then vetoed the $15 bill which came before her, she explained that she hadn’t sworn on the Bible when making the promise.

 

********************************************************************

And one thing that’s worth a closer look:

hammer & wrench While “Luddite” has come to mean “technophobe,” the first Luddites were in fact skilled machine operators, and their real life history of organizing, protest, and smashing-stuff-up is quite a bit more complex than you might think. It turns out that the their namesake Ned Ludd was not a real person; that tensions between work, skill, technology, and automation go back at least a few hundred years; and that history may be a better tool to understand the future of work than science fiction or venture capital.

 

Read this far?

tophat Consider yourself briefed, boss.

 

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