- You may not realize it, but the CHIPS law is quite exciting. But not everyone agrees with me.
- More monkeypox (MPV) vaccine has come to Washington state.
- Joe Kent takes charge in the 3rd congressional district; Herrera Beutler admits.
This post originally appeared in KUOW’s Today So Far newsletter for August 10, 2022.
I often say that the news stories that most people skip are the most important. They may seem dull on the surface. Maybe they don’t have enough flair, anger or drama. But in the end you suffer. Well, buckle up for this one, because President Biden just signed the CHIPS and Science Act!
Even that story I linked above – they wrote about CHIPS against the backdrop of Trump’s mansion raid. That’s the equivalent of hiding a news pill in peanut butter. I’d say CHIPS is an investment in technology that has the potential to dip into our daily lives for generations – so it’s more like CHIPS and dip.
This is essentially a $250 billion national investment in semiconductor manufacturing, among other technological capabilities (and has nothing to do with the 1980s TV show of the same name). CHIPS’s goal is to make America more competitive with countries like China, which dominate the manufacturing of microchips. Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a shortage of microchips and that has hit us hard. For example, have you noticed that cars are much more expensive lately? That’s partly because of a shortage of semiconductors and cars use a lot of them.
If you’re like my wife Nina, who wanted to reward herself for completing a two-year career training program with a new PS5, you’ve found that you can’t find one anywhere – because there aren’t enough microchips. If you care about new, renewable energy, you should care about semiconductors. If you care about local, homegrown jobs, then you should care about semiconductors. Do you like working from home in your pajamas, making Zoom calls, and answering emails… you get the idea.
Like I said, that’s the purpose of CHIPS, but I have a feeling it will have different results. Think of it this way – we invested in going to the moon in the 1960s and now you’re calling around the world and watching endless TV channels (thanks satellites). We invested in DARPA and now you’re probably reading this on a smartphone that uses the internet (thanks DARPA). Trying to list the influence of these technologies here would be exhausting. I am hopeful that further investment can benefit us in the coming years, especially in a region like ours, which has a strong space economy.
But not everyone sees things the way I do. There are critics. KUOW’s Soundside just covered the range of perspectives on this. On the one hand, you have someone like Scott Keeney who founded nLIGHT, a semiconductor laser manufacturing company in Washington. He is excited about the CHIPS law because it means more jobs and business.
“Everything from your smartphone is manufactured by our lasers, NASA satellites use our lasers to measure changes in global warming — a wide variety of applications,” Keeney said.
And then there’s someone like Alan Sykes, a law professor at Stanford and an economist by training, who argues that CHIPS could make the industry obsolete.
“You get inefficient production at a higher cost than if you just let the market work alone,” he said, adding that the government should stay away from such innovation and saying the US already has a stable market. supply of semiconductors from Taiwan.
Sykes says the CHIPS bill taps into protectionist rhetoric that sprang up during the Trump administration. Watch the full story on Soundside.
According to the most recent count, Washington state has about 223 cases of monkey pox, also known as “MPV.” A total of 85% of those cases are in King County. It has appeared in 12 provinces so far. Washington just received a new shipment of vaccine for MPV, which health officials are sending to Island, Kitsap, Pierce, Skagit, Snohomish and Whatcom counties. Doses are not distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Instead, officials have analyzed the situation and are targeting those most at risk. read more here.
An update on yesterday’s primary story on Washington’s 3rd congressional district – Republican incumbent Jaime Herrera Buetler has conceded the race to her GOP opponent Joe Kent.
Herrera Buetler was ahead when the first primary results came in last week, but the votes for Kent kept trickling in and he caught up with the incumbent. According to last night’s count, Kent is 928 votes ahead.
The 3rd district is way up there in southwest Washington. Why do I keep updating you about it? This is Washington’s version of an election story set in the US. After the January 6 uprising, Herrera Buetler was among a handful of Republicans who voted to impeach former President Trump. Congressman Dan Newhouse in Washington was another — he just survived the primaries and will be voted in November. These GOP candidates were challenged by Trump supporters.
In the case of the 3rd district, Kent is a former green beret backed by Trump. He embraces conspiracy theories, including lies about the 2020 election. He has also had to distance himself from a white nationalist who consulted about his campaign, and has embraced the “white replacement” rhetoric. But he rejects any idea that adopting such rhetoric should label a person as a “white nationalist” or a “neo-Nazi.” I think it’s worth knowing who might represent our state in Congress.
Kent will take on Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in November in a battle for the 3rd district. Aside from running for Obama in 2008, the 3rd since 2000 has favored Republican presidential candidates. Over the years, it has generally interacted between Republicans and Democrats in Congress. November must be interesting.
AS SEEN ON KUOW
Kayla White, a Washington State Patrol dispatcher, sits behind her console in the Tacoma communications office. Most weeks she works three 12-hour days, in addition to two other regular 8-hour days, to make up for the ongoing staff shortages. In addition, she and her colleagues are now handling calls east of the Cascades after the Wenatchee communications center was closed due to staff shortages at Washington’s 911 dispatch centers. (Northwest News Network)
DID YOU KNOW?
The “Addams Family” is a pop culture sensation that has lasted through time, since the 1960s TV show showed the bizarre family on small screens far and wide. Since then, modern movies, animated movies, a great pinball machine and more have been made of it.
But the Addams Family didn’t originate on TV. It was initially a newspaper cartoon. You know, those one-frame gag panels like The Far Side or political cartoons. The Addams Family debuted in The New Yorker in 1938. The joke was a family that strayed from the norm and found joy in the macabre. It was printed for 50 years. They were the product of cartoonist Charles Addams, whose work often appeared in The New Yorker, Collier’s and TV Guide. Addams produced approximately 1,300 published cartoons, 150 of which were of the Addams Family.
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