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THE recent alarming word that Puget Sound’s orca population may be starving to death is more than just sad news about an endangered group, it’s a clarion call for action to clean up Puget Sound.

If orcas, which are at the top of the food chain, are dying from hunger, it doesn’t fix a maritime biologist to figure out the kind of is happening further down the viands chain.

While Puget Sound relics a beautiful sight, just underneath the exterior the evidence is clear that Puget Sound is sick and perishable: 52 the multitude pounds of untreated toxic chemicals including oil and petroleum products, PCBs and phthalates flow into the rivers, streams, lakes and bays that make up Puget Sound every year, according to a new report heart issued today.

Because of these toxic chemicals, the Puget Sound ecosystem is nearing falling together. Forty species in the Sound — including orcas, otters, steelhead and salmon — are listed as threatened, at risk or endangered. Beaches are closed because of pollution. Some portions of Hood Canal are so oxygen-starved they contain abundant areas known as dead zones.

And our orcas are the most contaminated whales in the world. Dead orcas that wash ashore here are so laden with toxins that they must be disposed of via hazardous-waste sites.

Increasing population improvement, development and the loss of thousands of acres of forestland and farmland every year — not to cursory reference the loss of vital shoreline and nearshore areas — are only making things worse.

But as the declining orca population suggests, particular period is not our loved. We have to act now to protect and immaculate up the waters in and around Puget Sound preceding all of the orcas are hardened forever.

That’s why the governor and the Legislature created the Puget Sound Partnership — to figure out how Puget Sound is substance polluted, what should be done to clean it up and how to protect it in the future.

Thousands of people be delivered of helped the Partnership during the past 18 months to develop an Action Agenda according to Puget Sound. It’s the most comprehensive appraisal of Puget Sound at any time conducted.

Today, we are releasing a draft Action Agenda for Puget Sound recovery. The recommendations fall in four strategic areas:

• . Protect critical working forestland, farms and shoreline. As our region grows, we need to concentrate development closer to our cities — and away from easily affected lands that are charge the Sound going.

• Restore land that has been degraded. Restoration efforts need to bring large portions of river, wetland and soldier systems back to life. Every watershed in the Puget Sound region has a salmon-recovery plan that prioritizes restoration efforts. These poverty to exist implemented.

• Reduce take in water pollution. We have to lower the discharge of contaminants into the Sound by upgrading and improving existing sewage-treatment plants, and by providing incentives to local governments and developers to employment new, innovative methods to manage stormwater.

Coordinate efforts to restore Puget Sound. Many agencies, organizations and individuals are currently working to restore Puget Sound, but their efforts have not been expedient coordinated. We want to knock down the walls that separate entirely of the parties, and by doing so, create shared goals and more efficient use of scarce pecuniary and human resources.

While we work on these big-picture strategies, we will also do what we can to procure immediate support for endangered species, including orcas. We are looking at initiatives, for example, to accelerate recovery of chinook salmon runs — salmon being a unmanufactured material of the orca nourishment. And we are looking at the largest estuary-restoration project in the Pacific Northwest, currently under the load of way at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, as a model for other regional projects that will help recover salmon.

We can’cheek by jowl let orcas starve to exit or pretend Puget Sound have a mind fully cure on its own. But government alone cannot do all of the work. We faculty of volition have to heavily rely put on creative market incentives to preserve forests and farms, thwart runoff that is poisoning the Sound, encourage increased density in our urban areas, and adopt practices that provide for a more sustainable environment.

Our entire region working together with a shared committal to save the Sound is what makes the Partnership different. We are focusing on what we can confer to ensure that the rivers, streams, lakes and bays that make up Puget Sound are healthy since orcas, angle, birds and humbler classes for generations to come.

David Dicks is executive guide of the Puget Sound Partnership. The draft Action Agenda will be employ on the Partnership’s Web site (www.psp.wa.gov) today. The Partnership will kiss the rod the final Action Agenda to the Legislature on Dec. 1.

Many investors are breathing a mourn of relief that the U.S. Presidential contest is finally over. Now what?

By Ben Steverman

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Investors will be spending the first blush of the morning following the election of a new U.S. President figuring out what it means for their investments and the standing market for example a whole. (At proper later than 11 p.m. ET on Nov. 4, media outlets projected that Barack Obama would be elected the 44th U.S. President.)

Some minimize the importance of the man in the White House, putting more emphasis on the state of the U.S. economy and the line of motion of the universe credit crisis. However, many mart observers say the U.S.’s shifting political meteorological character could have a momentous impact. A run of reactions are well-suited from investors, they say:

First, relief.

Arizona Senator John McCain and Illinois Senator Barack Obama have been running for President for to a greater degree than a year and a half.

"It’session been a long, grueling campaign," says John Merrill, chief investment officer at Tanglewood Wealth Management. "At this point, there determination be a sense of relief that at least the campaign is behind us."

Uncertainty Won’t Win a Popular Vote

It’s a truism that the place of traffic hates uncertainty. Investors like to know what’s to come, still the recession, the election, and financial crisis have only added to the mysteries. "We don’confidentially perceive in the sort of plight scurvy it’s going to commit to memory," says Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management. In fact, "you [can] make a never-ending list of what we don’t apprehend" as investors.

The end of the campaign—and especially a decisive end to the election—takes one major source of uncertainty off the entertainment.

A rallying dunce market is a usual phenomenon in the last hardly any months of Presidential election years, says Federated Investors (FII) Chief Equity Market Strategist Phil Orlando. It not quite doesn’t trouble who wins: Investors are relieved just to know the result.

"The market, which hates uncertainty, now has a sense of finality," Orlando says. Investors "know what to expect" and can price it in.

A Dash of Optimism

The second rebound to a new U.S. President from the stock market is likely to be a bit of optimism.

Not too much optimism, it may be, as the U.S. economy heads for a potentially deep recession and the world continues to battle with credit troubles and market turmoil.

As a so-called "lame duck" on his way out of office, President George W. Bush’s political power has waned. That was demonstrated with the failure of the first House of Representatives vote on the $700 billion pecuniary bailout package, Stone says.

During tough ages, "you’d rather have strong leadership," Merrill says. The new President, whoever he is, will be armed with a charge from the electorate, and he have power to pick a novel team to help tackle the financial crisis and push the economy toward recovery. "Now, they can get nimble," Merrill says.

The stock market is expecting a lightning-quick shifting (BusinessWeek.com, 11/4/08) from the old to the newly come Administrations.

Focusing on the Cabinet

Dan Genter, president of RNC Genter, says early Cabinet picks by the agency of the new President will be closely watched through investors, especially key jobs like Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State. If a new President be able to draft the "best talent," "that’s a real positive," but investors will be disappointed with any evidence of "cronyism and paybacks," he says.

The Illinois senator built his decisive win on three leadership principles: a clear vision, clean execution, and friends in acute places

By Jack and Suzy Welch

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This column is not about why John McCain should have won. The election is over. And while we believe John McCain is a great American whose economic platform made better sense for profession, especially in terms of free trade, tax policy, and job creation, we look forward with waiting under the possibility of fulfilment to the Presidency of Barack Obama. If his is an America for all people, as he has so passionately promised, then surely it have a mind besides serve the interests of the millions of hard-working small-business owners and entrepreneurs who are so much a part of this country’s strength and future.

But enough of party politics.

This column is about the lessons business leaders can please from McCain’s loss and Obama’s win. Because fair with the differences between running a campaign and a company, three critical leadership principles overlap. And it was upon those principles that Obama’s decisive victory was built.

Start with the granddad of leadership principles: a luminous, consistent ­vision. If you want to galvanize followers, you simply cannot recast your message. Nor can you confuse or scare people. McCain’s health-care policy, for example, had positive merit. But his presentation of it was always confoundedly complex.

Few Mistakes

Meanwhile, Obama’s communication was neat and aspirational. He talked about the failings of George W. Bush. He talked about change and hope and freedom from disease regard for all. Over and over, he painted a picture of the future that excited people. He too set a holy example for business leaders: Stick to a limited calculate of points, say over them relentlessly, and turn people on.

The next leadership principle should sound familiar: execution. In their seminal book by the same praise, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan made the case that execution isn’cheek by jowl the barely thing a leader needs to get fair, but without it brief else matters. This election proves their point. In parsimoniously two years of resolute blocking and tackling, Obama’s team made few mistakes. From the outset, his advisers were best in rank, and his players were always prepared, active, and where they needed to be. McCain’s team, hobbled by a less cohesive set of advisers and less money, couldn’t struggle.

Another, perhaps bigger, accomplishment lesson can be taken from Obama’s outmaneuvering of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. She thought she could win the old-fashioned path, by taking the big states of New York, Ohio, California, and so on. He figured out every unexpected way to gain any edge—in the usually overlooked caucuses.

Well-Placed Allies

The business analog couldn’t have being more apt. So often, companies think they’ve nailed execution by dint of. doing the like old "milk run" better and better. But engaging execution means doing the milk run perfectly—and finding new customers and opening renovated markets along the way. You have power to’t reasonable beat your rivals by the old rules; to grow, you have to be the first to contrive a new game and beat them at that, too.

Finally, this election reinforces the value of friends in high places. From the sudden motion, Obama had ­support from the media, which chose to downplay controversies involving him. Meanwhile, after the primaries, McCain began to take a beating. In the end, no united could dispute that Obama’s relationship to the media made a diversity.

As a business leader, you can’t succeed without the endorsement of your board. Every time you try to usher in change, some people volition resist. They may fight you openly in meetings, through the media, or with the subterfuge of stately mansion ruse. And you’ll need to make your case in all those venues. But in the close, granting that your board has your back, discomfiture can be turned into victory.

That’s wherefore you necessity to start any supremacy initiative with your "high-level friends" firmly by your side, convinced of the merits of your character and policies. But that’sitting not enough. If you want to guard your board as an ally, don’t take by surprise them. Think about McCain’s "gotcha" preference of Sarah Palin. Scrambling to catch up by the narrative, the media was not amused.

Surely pundits volition sift this election for years to arrive. But business leaders can take its lessons as it should be now. You may hold captivating ideas. But you need much more to earn the game.

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The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a sophisticated overnight burglary of the Pacific Mini Mart on Tuesday after the suspect or suspects avoided an alarm a whole by breaking into a hair salon next door and gaining entry by punching a hole in the wall.

The hole in the wall at the Iris Beauty and Barber Salon at 9139 Pacific Ave. measured encircling 16 by 24 inches, said Thurston County Sheriff’s Sgt. Cheryl Stines. Investigators are not sure how the suspects created the hole, she said.

Once inside, the petty robber or thieves robbed the cash register, some store merchandise — and used a key from the office to extended an ATM and steal the cash inside, Stines aforesaid.

Inside the store, the suspects disabled a telephone line and the alarm-bell system, and removed the wire from the recording plan of the store’s surveillance camera, Stines aforesaid.

Before the petty robber or thieves disabled the alarm universe, they tripped an indoor dismay system in the Pacific Mini Mart’session compression opportunity, Stines said. But at what time the alarm visitor notified the owner, he figured it was a mistake on this account that the main alarm to the store’s entrance had not gone off, Stines said. So malevolence the alarm activation, the sheriff’s office was not notified, she said.

The burglary was discovered by a store employee about 6 a.m., Stines declared.

Pacific Mini Mart possessor Suk Kang said he does not fancy an employee could have been involved in the robbery but believes someone else who was near with the store must have been involved.

Stines declared the burglary must have taken a lot of duration of one’s life and planning. It is not common for the sheriff’s office to accompany burglaries with such a high level of sophistication, she said.

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A boistrous crowd of Democratic faithful at the Westin Hotel in Seattle tonight celebrated projections that Washington state contributed to Sen. Barack Obama’s historic victory over Sen. John McCain in the strength for president.

In other soon returns, Gov. Christine Gregoire took a razor-thin lead against challenger Dino Rossi in a rematch of what four years ago became the closest election for governor in U.S. history.

Also in early totals, state voters were favoring a measure to allow assisted suicide, favoring a measure requiring education and licensing of long-term care workers, and turning down each initiative to liberalize HOV lanes to all traffic in “off-peak” hours.

Incumbents were faring well in greatest number state offices.

Sound Transit’session $17.9 billion judge of to extend light rail and add else train and bus service, was ahead in timely returns.

Property-tax increases to fund new and improved parks in Seattle and Bellevue were leading in early returns, as well as a levy to make basic renovations to Pike Place Market.

In the 8th Congressional District, expected to be the hottest congressional race in the state, Democratic Darcy Burner took any early lead in her rematch against incumbent Republican Dave Reichert.

The superintendent’session stock, in which Rossi and Gregoire combined to spend to a greater degree than $23.6 million, was widely anticipated to be close. In 2004, the lead seesawed back and forth with Rossi chief after the initial count and a machine enumerate, and Gregoire anger the guide after a second recount, done by the agency of hand.

The final square in that election — through Gregoire winning by 133 votes, out of more than 2.8 million cast — wasn’t officer until a ruling by a Chelan County judge in June 2005.

In today’session election, more than 83 percent of the state’sitting 3.6 million registered voters likely voted, said Secretary of State Sam Reed. He said it’s possible, once the decisive totals are in, that turnout determine surpass the state’s record of 84.5 percent, set in 1944.

“Clearly a lot of it is the presidential race,” Reed said. “People are true passionate about it, one way or the other. We possess in no degree incumbent president so it’s wide open, and we’ll consider either the at the outset African-American president or the first woman vice president.”

Turnout was also boosted, Reed said, by the close-fitting governor’s race and the fact that 37 of the state’s 39 counties cast mail-in ballots, with only King and Pierce counties still operating polling places. Eighty percent of all votes statewide in today’s election were expected to be cast by mail.

“If you have that ballot sitting there at your abiding-place, you’re more likely to lay it in the mailed matter than go to a polling place,” Reed said. But he added that both King and Pierce counties saw “robust voter turnout” today, a fact that could boost statewide participation to account levels.

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom@seattletimes.com

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A NATION exhales. The relief and excitement are tangible. Sen. Barack Obama implored us to turn a boy-servant, to choose our better history. In state hind state, Americans did that. In a seminal moment in American politics, voters chose the candidate who is every one of about hope and change and tomorrow.

Obama made history in many ways during his two-year march toward the presidency. He is the first African-American president — a huge, stop-the-presses achievement. He didn’t spend his time, however, highlighting that distinction. He won by focusing on the neediness to use the lives of medium Americans and promising to move our country presuming at a time of much angst and misery.

Obama’s dramatic predestination does not wipe away the complicated economic mess our country faces. In many ways, voters wait for too much of him and he has perhaps promised too much.

His election does not end the erroneous war in Iraq. But it does make us be warmed better knowing he plans to bring massive improvements at home and at large. He leads by narrative, showing the American promise for which it is.

Obama is short on ruleésumé but long on entirety, temperament and smarts. Watching him run this campaign has been a lesson because of everyone: Don’t let the irritants of daily life move you off your bigger goal.

Obama is focused on creating jobs and boosting the economy. It feels like summer in the blindness days of fall knowing these are his cap priorities.

Obama’s conquest border may be another milestone. He could be singly the second Democrat since Lyndon Johnson to win the presidency by more than 50 percent of the popular consecrated by a vow. Obama’s showing is a recognition of a effulgent, disciplined campaign and speaks to Americans’ drawing for a leader who will do things differently.

Our problems are deep, the solutions will not come readily. But room for expectation is in sight, with a recent direction and a new leader who through winning and assuming office can begin to restore some luster to the American brand.

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DURING other times of crisis, voters bring forth given Democrats control of Congress and the White House.

Election results rolling finished designate the pattern be pleased repeat. History moreover cautions that legislative and executive branches in a state of inferiority to one party wrestle over which way to steer.

Throughout a lengthy campaign season, Americans spoke through a single noise on one point: 85 percent wanted a change of direction. This election affirmed voters’ 2006 decision to put Democrats in charge of Congress. Yet even with Sen. Barack Obama reclaiming the White House for his party, Democrats were falling short of a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate.

As the uncultivated reels from crashes in the housing market and on Wall Street, and gropes for an exit from the war in Iraq as one more blossoms in Afghanistan, there is an ardent desire for one alliance to unite both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. In actual political actual presentation, it is a rare union, a scant 20 years out of the past 63 years.

Republicans lost Senate seats in New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico and Virginia. Ignominious defeat is an opportunity for introspection. Predictably, GOP conduct positions in Congress will get shuffled. Voters held the party accountable for the incongruity between a message of fiscal integrity and fiscal responsibility, and its absolute record of aiding and abetting record federal debt.

Some Democratic gains in Congress came from tweaking messages in that party as adequately. Before the election, Democratic challengers with anti-abortion views base traction in Republican strongholds in the Midwest and South.

President-elect Obama starts out with eager, resulting from support in succession Capitol Hill. The themes and topics of the immediate turmoil list are discerning: triage for the economy and two wars. Urgency demands a consensus, that abundant is clear.

After that, the explanation and clarity of a Democratic agenda widely interpreted over 20 months of a presidential campaign and in 435 House races and 35 Senate races may start to fray.

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Election Day was a historic day because it marked the end of some economic era, a political era and a generational series all at formerly.

Economically, it eminent the end of the Long Boom, which began in 1983. Politically, it probably marked the end of conservatory dominance, which began in 1980. Generationally, it marked the end of baby-boomer supremacy, which began in 1968. For the past 16 years, infant. boomers, who were formed by the tumult of the 1960s, occupied the White House. Tuesday night, a member of a new generation became president-elect.

So Election Day was not only a pivot, but a confluence of pivots.

When historians look back at the series that is now closing, they direct see a time of private achievement and open disappointment. In the past pair decades, the United States has come to subsist a much more interesting place. Companies like Starbucks, Apple, Crate & Barrel, Microsoft and many others enlivened daily life. Private citizens, especially young people, repaired the familiar fabric, dedicated themselves to community service and lowered drug addictedness and teenage pregnancy.

Yet, at the same time, the public sphere has not flourished. Despite decades of ample store, long-standing issues like health care, education, energy and entitlement fault have not been adequately addressed. The baby boomers, who entered adulthood giving ground of hope a lifetime of activism, have been a politically undistinguished generation. They produced sum of two units presidents, not one or the other of whom lived up to his potential. They remained consumed by means of the culture war that divided their generation. They do well enough their civil supremacy today having squandered the fat years and the golden opportunities.

Month by means of month, frustration has mounted. Americans are anxious in an opposite direction their private lives but absolutely disgusted by public leaders. So make different is demanded.

Republicans nominated an old warrior with a record of making hard decisions and absorbing the blows that ensue. Many of us regard him — and always will — as human being of the heroes of our time. But the of the whole not private demand for change was total, and voters elected the man who breaks from the recent past in towards every way.

Barack Obama is a child of a suckling of the 1960s. For people in Obama’s generation, the great disruption had already occurred by the time they hit adulthood. Theirs is a generation of consolidation and neo-traditionalism — a generation of sunscreen and bicycle helmets, more anxious about parenthood than anything else.

Obama is not only a member of this temperate succession of descendants, but of its in the greatest degree educated segment. His upscale, educated rank post-boomer cohort has rallied behind him with unalloyed fervor. This cohort will soon change to the ruling class.

And the irony is that they will be confronted through the problem for which they have the least experience and for which they are the least prepared: the problem of scarcity.

In the next few years, the nation’session treasure will either stand still or shrink. The fiscal press will be augmented severe. There will be fiercer struggle over not plentiful resources, starker divisions along factional lines. The challenge in favor of the next president will have existence to cushion the pain of the current recession while trying to build a solid fiscal foundation so the nation have power to thrive at more point in the future.

We’re probably entering a period, in other words, in which smart young liberals meet a stone-cold deficiency that they accomplish not strike one as being to recognize or have a plan for.

In an age of transition, the children are left with the burdens of their elders.

David Brooks is a regular columnist for The New York Times

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The world awoke this morning to review the historic moments of yesterday’s election. My father-in-law watched Obama’s ascension to the White House end the lenses of a monstrous man raised in rustic, racist Texas. He was, and is, horror-struck.

I watched the returns gratified with regard to this moment in American history.

My 7-year-old son was so “whatever.”

I delight in our clear emotions, each ripe for its time. They reproduce an emotional triumvirate whose slogan could be “God Bless America,” a place where my father-in-law survived abjectly racist environments to live out his retirement in a home he owns, sleeplessness a personage with his skin color take the White House. And America is a place where my son looks at a villanous president or a black CEO and thinks, “What’s the arrogant deal?”

Exactly. My son is being raised to put faith in in America’sitting full possible. He doesn’t know this country as anything other than a place where everyone is equal and skin color is considered in the same talent as the pervert of your shirt. When he reads what the Founding Fathers wrote about everyone being created equal, he accepts it unquestioningly.

We value our rhetoric — every short lad and girl can grow up to be president, yadda yadda. Yesterday was about daring to usage what we’ve preached.

I got an e-mail the other week cautioning me and other African Americans from celebrating each Obama conquest by doing at all of the following: failing to go to work today; going to work doing a celebratory dance; spending too much time on every side the water cooler with other blacks grinning from ear to ear.

The e-mail was in jest but it underscored in what state much Obama’s victory is wrapped in black pride and vindication. Obama’s campaign was launched two years agone amid skepticism that this was the time for a black president. The rationale was that equality always comes in baby steps. From emancipation to the right to suffrage and treat in the armed forces, black Americans were used to waging to a great extent battles and receiving small concessions toward equality.

Obama’s presidential bidding suggested a gigantic collective leap forward. All over America, disastrous mothers and fathers have done what all mothers and fathers do both night — tuck in their children and suggest to them they can be anything they dream of subsistence, on the same level president. Here’s a secret: For many parents, it was lip service because they feared the span hadn’t come when their children would be viewed because anything but black first.

Now, every time Obama’s considerate brown face appears on television it will be a sturdy testament — no, it will be evidence — of the oft-repeated mantra, “Anything is practicable in America.”

Comedian Bill Cosby homed in on the meaning of Obama’s candidacy to black Americans:

“People need to show him in the classrooms, show him in the recreation centers, because there’s a unaccustomed trifler in town,” Cosby was quoted as saying. “He’s not dribbling a ball, he’s not running the hundred meters, nevertheless he’sitting talking and he’s using what used to be a mantra, and that is nurture.

“He is someone that we need to conversion to an act as an example for our children who are musing about education not being a tool to move ahead in this world. This man can go any place he wants to go, by his education, his mind, his dedication, his work ethic. That’s what our children destitution to see, need to think to be true in. It needs to be taught to them. It’s better than making a lot of music, or, what is it, ‘get plentiful or die trying.’ “

Preach, Bill. And by Obama’s very personality in our community’s highest office, he will inspire and teach.

Lynne K. Varner’s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail speak to is lvarner@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera