SeattleIAM: Seattle Storm to be Sold, Fundamentalist Plans Microsoft Takeover

This is a selection of recent popular blog articles from SeattleIAM where you will find the best blogs from Seattle, Washington as well as video uploads, social networking, rumors, and blog authoring

Seattle Storm Sold to Local Ownership

A brief post by Eric Williams on The News Tribune’s Sonics Insider reports that the Seattle Storm have “reportedly been sold to local ownership.” Williams is curious about this decision as “Sonics chairman Clay Bennett had said he wanted to keep the two teams together.” Bennett has said in the past that he considered it more “valuable” to keep the Storm and Sonics together.

Williams also wonders just how much of a “financial hit” Bennett is taking “with everything that is happening with the arena situation.” The announcement is supposed to take place today at a press conference. “We'll see how this affects the Sonics situation and whether they stay or go.” A link to the full Tribune story can be found in the post.

Skeptical About Proposal for Universal Health Care for Washington

According to a recent post on Sound Politics, Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler is “trying to pass universal health care for everyone in the state of Washington.” Our blogger is skeptical not only about the whole idea of universal health care, but of Kreidler’s credibility in general. Kreidler describes his plan for “state-controlled coverage for catastrophic care, [as] something over 10 or 20 thousand dollars in a given year, along some minimal level of what might be considered preventive… for everybody in the state of Washington.”

Kreidler claims it won’t cost any more than we're all paying right now. He also states that with major and catastrophic coverage, it will be easier for employers to offer routine health care. Our blogger expresses skepticism in the post, especially around the idea that it won’t cost any more. In addition, our blogger questions that it will “free up money” for employers to use on expanded health care and it does nothing for residents who are employed out of state. The plan will likely “require an income/payroll tax” and applies to everyone in Washington, “apparently including non-citizens, and people here illegally.”

Fundamentalist Threat to Microsoft?

Blogging for Slog, the Stranger’s blog, Eli Sanders reports that Pastor Ken Hutcherson has revamped his plans for a Microsoft takeover, using the U.S. stock market “to Christian-fundamentalist advantage.” As you may recall, a few year’s ago, Hutcherson concocted a plan “to bring Microsoft to its knees via some sort of well-financed hostile takeover of a large number of the company’s shares.” He was pushing an idea in which Christians “would buy up Microsoft shares, sell them all on the same day, and thereby destroy Microsoft’s stock price.”

At that time, a market expert “laughed in Hutcherson’s face.” But has Hutcherson gotten smarter over the years? His new plan involves asking Christians “to buy Microsoft stock and then donate it to… his newly-formed AGN Financial Network.” He’ll then hold it, wait for stock to rise, then sell it at a profit. Since MSFT shares pay dividends, Sanders asks in his post, if AGN Financial Network acquires several thousand shares, while the stock rises, “and Hutch is showing up at every shareholders’ meeting to wage a losing anti-gay battle… who will be getting those annual dividends?”

Boeing Sees Employment Rise in 2007

John Gille reports in Biz Buzz that Boeing’s employment significantly rose over the past year. The company is no longer seeing the huge gains and losses that used to characterize the Washington workforce, but they “added enough workers last year here to staff a good-sized company.” Recently released figures show that Boeing “employed 74,160 workers in Washington as of Dec. 31, 2007. That's up 5,590 from Jan. 31, 2007.”

According to the post, “Washington remains by far Boeing's largest center of employment.” California ranks second, but dropped 930 employees in 2007. “Of the seven states with the largest Boeing employment, only Washington and Pennsylvania gained workers last year.” As a whole, the company added 5,232 workers. We can “credit Boeing's booming commercial aviation business” for the gains in Washington. They have “a backlog of more than 3,400 airliners scheduled to be built in the Puget Sound area.”

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