Another day at the Port of Seattle... as a deal was announced last week for a four-year lease at Pier 66 for Norwegian Cruise Lines. Under terms of the deal, Norwegian will get the first year of the lease free--that's a value of about $450,000--plus we (that is, King County taxpayers) pick up construction costs of $4.1 million to build the terminal. No word on how many jobs this little gift will provide, but--in the finest tradition of local labor being fully behind corporate welfare--an ILWU spokesperson says he anticipates "many" jobs. It would need to be about 50 jobs, for a cruise line that loads and unloads passengers once a week, to get the welfare tab down under $100,000 per job created.--Geov Parrish

Who would be helped by I-688, November's minimum-wage ballot initiative? Here's a list of the state industries most reliant on minimum wage labor, and the percentage of their workers employed at these decidedly unliveable wages: Motion picture (55%); Agriculture (47.3%); Eating & drinking places (47.2%); Childcare (46.6%); Amusement & recreation (25.5%); Hotel, motel (25%); Food stores (24.6%); Apparel, textile (24.1%).--G.P.

We go to press too early to report on the results, but a last minute effort came together this week to protest, and ideally cancel, a Tuesday show at Seattle's Fenix nightclub by the "industrial" band Blood Axis. Turns out the band has extensive ties to white supremacist groups, including being featured (under an alias, "Coup de Grace") on a white power compilation on the white supremacist label Warcom. Michael Moynihan of Blood Axis is quoted in several online Neo-Nazi magazines as saying he finds the idea of a white homeland super-duper. The cover for that compilation album is artwork of noneother than notorious white supremacist Tom Metzger. The Fenix has been flooded with calls--the club says they were unaware, in booking the band, of its true nature--and if the show proceeds it will only be with a vocal anti- racist presence. Kudos to the musicians who noticed this show and organized the opposition--proof (again) that all youth are not apathetic, and that all punks (and skinheads) are not racist jerks.--G.P.

Last week brought grim news from the U.N.'s International Labor Office. By the end of 1998, at least one billion people worldwide will be unemployed, under-employed or making less than the minimum needed to live. That's 30 percent of the world's adult, able population. The trend is strongest in Asia, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Africa--but is not confined to those regions. The falling price of oil has meant layoffs in the public sector in most Middle Eastern countries, while over 18 million people remain unemployed in the European Union. Here in the U.S., we've seen a small growth in the number of jobs, but most of those jobs are in low-paying retail or service sectors, and the number of under-employed (i.e. part-time) workers has grown.--M.T.

As if to prove how greedy they are, investment managers are lining up to give their solutions for slowing the global recession. Unfortunately, the solutions they've proposed are about as useful as bandaids on a corpse. Robert Hormats, a vice chairman at Goldman, Sachs & Co., said in a speech at New York University Law School that the U.S. needs to do three things to alleviate the recession:

re-commit to "working with" emerging markets (ostensibly to drain more money out of them),
help Brazil stay afloat by any means necessary (a stop-gap measure to keep our own banking system from failing), and
"build community by helping those who need it most..."

Last week we learned that NASA is yearning to become Russia's newest lender, with the purchase of two useless Soyuz space capsules for $100 million. Now NASA wants to dump another $660 million into Russia over the next four years to keep the Russian space agency afloat, according to the Washington Post. Ostensibly, the money will purchase more unneeded space junk; in actuality, the funds will be used to pay Russian space workers--if it doesn't get siphoned off by corrupt Russian bureaucrats first. Evidently "key administration and congressional officials concur that it would be cheaper in the long run to help shore up the strapped Russian space program than to have the Russians drop out of the space-station project for lack of money." Hey. I have a better solution. Drop the whole damn project. That's how you save money.--M.T.

If you're still wondering why the U.S. decided to drop cruise missiles on Sudan, instead of going through U.N. channels to investigate the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, here's another reason: in three or four months, the U.S. may get its butt kicked out of the U.N. entirely. Unless Congress comes up with a portion of the $1.5 billion in unpaid dues owed to the U.N. by the end of this year, the U.S. will be stripped of its vote in the General Assembly. Talk about embarrassing. On top of that, Congress has neglected to confirm a new chief representative to the U.N. after Bill Richardson left; our seat in the General Assembly has been vacant ever since. Over in Japan, where they're in a tizzy over how to keep their banking system afloat and avoid a major depression, they've nevertheless managed to keep their U.N. dues current. Japan is now the single largest contributor to the U.N. Moshi moshi!--M.T.