Presidential Election 2008:
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Elect Barack Obama (editorial endorsement) -- If the country ever needed new direction under a fresh, steady, calm president, this is the time. Sen. Barack Obama is the country's hope, the kind of promising, intelligent leader who comes along perhaps once in a generation. Obama is the best candidate for president. He has the vision, patience and fortitude to put America on a track to recovery after an eight-year run of financial irresponsibility, aggressive adventurism abroad and mismanagement, secrecy and dissembling on numerous fronts.
▪  In today's NY Times -- Campaigns shift to attack mode on eve of debate -- McCain made clear on Monday that he wanted to make the final month of the race a referendum on Obama’s character and background -- a polite way of saying he intends to attack him on all fronts and create or reinforce doubts about him among as many voters as possible. Obama’s campaign signaled that it would respond in kind, setting up an end game dominated by an invocation of events and characters from the lives of both.
▪  In today's NY Times -- Obama's personal ties subject of program on Fox News Channel -- During a weekend of Republican attacks on Obama's personal associations, Fox ran a program that made similar provocative assertions, called “Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism.”
▪  In Newsweek -- Vetting McCain's health plan -- McCain's tax credits would move people out of group plans and into individual policies where the benefits aren't as good. An estimated 20 million workers could leave the employer-based system, not always voluntarily. Midsize and smaller companies are likely to drop their plans and tell you to use the credit to buy a policy yourself. 
▪  In today's NY Times -- Business cool toward McCain's health care plan -- American business, typically a reliable Republican cheerleader, is decidedly lukewarm about McCain’s proposal to overhaul the system by revamping the tax treatment of health benefits, leading trade groups say.

Local news: 
▪  In today's Tri-City Herald -- Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council critical of Department of Energy -- Reducing the role of Hanford's workers in handling radioactive wastes would violate organized labor agreements and squander taxpayer money, the council contends.
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- What the bailout won't fix (op-ed by Sen. Karen Keiser) -- Significant changes can be made at the state level to ease the burden on families, but federal leadership is also needed. As our government struggles to restore financial health, we must also find a way to achieve health care that doesn't threaten to bankrupt American families. The clock is ticking.
▪  In today's Olympian -- State starts four-day workweeks -- Many state employees have backed trying four-day workweeks, and 82 percent of those at the Department of Community Trade and Economic Development supported it before the agency made the shift this week.
▪  In today's Seattle DJC -- Schools don't spend enough on maintenance, new report says (subscriber-only story; email us for a copy) -- The report says schools across the nation are degrading due to a lack of maintenance. Investment dropped from $35 billion in 2001 to $20 billion last year, the report found, and more money was being spent on new buildings instead of maintenance.
▪  In today's Peninsula Daily News -- Clallam County vows no employee layoffs in 2009 -- Nobody will lose his or her job next year because of budget cutbacks, vows the county administrator.
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Dorothy Haggen, 1909-2008: Founder of grocery chain was "giving" person -- Dorothy Haggen, a founder of the Bellingham-based Haggen chain of grocery stores, died Sunday.
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- L&I provides illegal services (op-ed by voc-rehab counselor) -- On the issue of job placement to illegal immigrants, L&I has not acted as a responsible state agency.

National news: 
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Starbucks faces another labor board complaint -- Starbucks is facing another NLRB complaint alleging that the gourmet coffee chain engaged in unfair labor practices by firing a barista in Michigan who supported unionization.
▪  Today from AP -- Lehman gave execs millions just before going bust, Congress told -- Days from becoming the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, Lehman Brothers steered millions to departing executives even while pleading for a federal rescue.
▪  In today's NY Times -- Multimillion-dollar men (news graphic) -- From 2003 to 2007, Lehman Brothers CEO Richard S. Fuld took home more than $256 million in pay.
▪  In today's Seattle P-I -- Economic slump disproportionately affects Latino workers (Salinas column) -- Almost everyone in the U.S. is or has been affected by the economic crisis facing our nation. But in a bad economy, the first jobs to go happen to be the ones held by unskilled immigrant workers.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi has now been named in a lawsuit filed by two former State Supreme Court justices charging that he illegally participated in fundraising for "independent political expenditures" by the Building Industry Association of Washington. There are no limits to the amount a money a special interest group like the BIAW can spend on independent activities -- in their case, negative political ads criticizing Rossi's opponent Gov. Chris Gregoire -- but it is illegal for the candidates who benefit to be involved in those activities.

Already, both the BIAW and the State Republican Party have been charged with breaking Washington state campaign finance laws in their efforts to support Rossi's candidacy. Those charges have been filed the Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican. 

Now, a King County Superior Court judge on Monday approved a request on behalf of former Supreme Court Justices Robert Utter and Faith Ireland -- both of whom were appointed by Republican governors -- to immediately subpoena witnesses, including Rossi, and begin taking depositions in the case. If Rossi is found to have coordinated with the BIAW, the lawsuit seeks to block the BIAW from spending the more than $1 million that remains in its campaign fund in the final weeks of the campaign. ChangePAC has already spent more than $2 million on TV and radio ads benefiting Rossi.

Among the evidence in the case are minutes from the May 2007 meeting of the BIAW-affiliated Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties (excerpted below), which indicate Rossi called the MBA urging the group to shift workers' compensation rebate money to the "BIAW's war chest" for its independent expenditures.

Rossi claims he didn't ask them to contribute any specific amounts of money into specific accounts, but even if he did, his efforts were legal because he wasn't officially a candidate yet. 

"Part of (the phone conversation with the MBA) was participation, but we never talked about dollar amounts and I never asked them to put money here or there. Part of it was them coming together with their political efforts," Rossi told The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "This was in 2007, long before I was a candidate for governor. I didn't ask them to put money anywhere but it would have been perfectly OK for me to do that because I wasn't even a candidate."

Rossi has traveled the state virtually non-stop promoting himself and his ideas for state government since losing his 2004 bid for governor. But until he officially announced his 2008 candidacy in October 2007, he did so under the auspices of a non-profit foundation he formed called Forward Washington. The foundation had a website that promoted Dino Rossi personally and was virtually indistinguishable from a campaign site. Rossi created his Rossi for Governor 2008 campaign fund way back in December 2004 (see below), before he was even sure he'd lost the 2004 election -- and was still calling himself a Republican. 

Rossi has also faced criticism for concealing who financed Forward Washington, a group that The Seattle Times described as "keeping Rossi's potential gubernatorial candidacy alive through speeches and travel." Because Forward Washington was a non-profit organization, as opposed to an official campaign, it was not compelled to disclose its contributors, nor was it bound to adhere to the state's campaign contribution limits.

Again claiming he was not yet officially a candidate, Rossi refused to voluntarily disclose the names of the businesses and individuals who contributed to Forward Washington. The Seattle Times criticized this concealment in its July 2, 2007 editorial, "Rossi's race: Questions for the quasi-candidate:" "Voters have a right to wonder why Rossi invented a group and pretends it is not part of a campaign."

"Dino Rossi is citing technicalities to excuse his efforts as a 'quasi-candidate' to illegally solicit independent expenditure money for his campaign," said D. Nolan Groves of the Washington State Labor Council. "Even if he escapes punishment, his behavior speaks volumes about the kind of governor he would be -- one who doesn't hesitate to actively skirt the law with his corporate special-interest buddies in order to get what he wants."