Increasing childcare costs by paying caretakers more? Childcare workers tend to be grossly underpaid women with a hard job. A friend (with education training) worked at a place in downtown Seattle that charged A LOT per child was paid slightly over minimum wage to care for a dozen small children (too young for pre-school). The company was making $$$ exploiting cheap labor. Sure, things may be different in rural areas, but if we are going to subsidize childcare, that money should go to workers not into profits. If it works anything like the ACA did, the guaranteed monthly stipend payments may well end up being worth more than low cost individual payments.

Here's what that linked article said about the child care plan:

"Nearly identical language, probably written by the exact same people, is found in the Build Back Better (BBB) child care plan currently being debated in Congress. That language requires states to ensure that child care worker wages “are equivalent to wages for elementary educators with similar credentials and experience in the State.”

The key here is "similar credentials and experience." Teachers are required to have masters' degrees here. So far as I now, child care workers are not even required to go to college. So it would appear that the mandatory wage increase would not generally apply to them anyway.

@5 & 6, You may be partly right, at least as far as WA state goes. But WA has higher standards than most other states for teacher credentials. WA more-or-less requires a MA degree (or very close to it) to become a certificated teacher. But that's not true for most other states. There are a handful of states that only require a high school diploma and short certification course. Lots of states only require a BA/BS, and that only for teaching secondary school. So this clause would be relevant to lots of states, even if it has minimal effect on WA.

Imagine leaving the commentary on the Julius Jones situation at "he still says he didn't do it" — without bothering to detail the many, many, many fucked-up goings-on of this case, including the fact that another man has confessed to committing that murder and letting Jones take the fall multiple times —and still calling yourself any kind of journalist.

I love the Stranger but everyone's work lately has been absolutely embarrassing.

@10, Since we're talking about good journalism, let's be accurate. Three people have come forward claiming that Christopher Jordan admitted to committing the murder and framing Jones. This should be taken seriously but very is different than a confession.

The defense didn't do a great job, but there was quite a bit of evidence against Mr. Jones as well. It's hardly a slam dunk that he's innocent as his supporters seem to claim.

Rich, thank you and bless you for sharing Amy Beach's Gaelic Symphony and Hannah Lash's hauntingly dissonant solo harp piece, Stalk. This is just what I needed.

Come on, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and fellow true Democrats (NOT Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, who are Mitch McConnell's RepubliKKKan bootlicking sock puppets), push the bassackwards RepubliKKKan Party of Trump BACK, already. Preferably off a cliff until every self serving crooked one of them is gone.

@12 xina for the WIN! Agreed and seconded.
It may just take the global disaster of a nuclear flash to finally eliminate the RepubliKKKan Party of Trump. If filibuster-stymied Democrats can't take them down, nature and COVID eventually will.