Major indexes dipped Monday as investors took profits from Friday’s New Year recover strength

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U.S. stocks were lower Monday as investors took profits in the rear of Friday’s stock place of traffic rally in the first session of the New Year. Trading was active following reports November construction spending fell by a less than expected 0.6% after uncertain 0.4% in October.

On Monday at 10:10 a.m. ET, the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average was down 93.35 points at 8,941.34. The broader S&P 500 index fell 9.03 points to 922.77. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index shed 23.38 points to 1,608.83.

Th U.S. dollar hand was solidly higher on a report that the Obama team is crafting a plan to offer $300 billion of levy cuts to individuals and businesses. The plan is larger than numerous company expected. Bonds were sharply lower on the Obama plot, amid worries the U.S. Treasury will have to take heavily this year.

Oil futures were up. Gold futures were lower.

In housekeeping news Monday, U.S. construction spending fell 0.6% in November from a 0.4% decline in October (upwardly revised from -1.2% previous to). September was also revised higher. The data are a great quantity in a superior manner than the 1.2% send down that markets feared. Sales are down 3.3% over last November. Residential construction spending declined 4.1% from the preceding month and is down 22.8% year-over-year. Nonresidential spending rose 1.0% from October and is up 9.2% year-over-year. Private spending sanguinary 1.5% month-over-month and is down 7.4% over last November. Public spending rose 1.4% and is up 7.9% year-over-year.

“While solely one month of data, the construction report was better than expected, to give markets some utility news entering into 2009,” says S&P senior economist Beth Ann Bovino.

On Tuesday, the market will get reports on November factory Orders and January’s ISM nonmanufacturing table of contents.

Shares of Apple (AAPL) were expected to open higher Monday following various reports that CEO Steve Jobs said he’s been afflicted by means of a hormone imbalance that has caused weight loss. “The counteraction for this nutritional point to be solved is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment,” Jobs said in an open letter to the Apple community. “But, just partiality I didn’t lose this much gravity and visible form mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my convalescence.”

Apple’s board of directors said in a separate statement it supports his actions. There had been widespread contemplation Jobs was suffering from cancer.

Shares of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) moved lower Monday after Deutsche Bank analyst Mike Mayo cut his earnings estimates and price mark on the stock, citing worsening economic trends that should bring forward additional pressure steady the company’s lend portfolios.

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal describe that Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, President-elect Barack Obama’s sparing for Commerce secretary, withdrew from consideration for that job, speech a pending investigation into whether his administration gave lucrative contracts to a civil donor would have “forced an untenable impediment” in his confirmation.

The announcement, just days before the Senate is to begin confirmation hearings for more of Obama’s cabinet selections, was a setback for the president-elect, who has assembled his retired apartment in near-record time.

President-elect Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer about $300 billion of tax cuts to individuals and businesses, a move aimed at attracting Republican support for every economic-stimulus parcel and prodding companies to create jobs, according to press reports. The largeness of the proposed levy cuts — which would account for about 40% of a stimulus bale that could reach $775 billion over two years — is greater than many steady both sides of the aisle in Congress had anticipated. It may make it easier to win over Republicans who be obliged stressed that any initiative should rely more heavily put on excise cuts rather than spending.

The largest piece of tax relief in the new plan would interweave cuts for the masses who pay gains taxes or who claim the earned-income credit, a refund designed to reduce the impact of payroll taxes on low- and moderate-income workers.

“The Obama administration’s planned stimulus program should subsist successful in stemming some of the bleeding associated with evidence of debt restraint and its effect on corporate investment in human, physical, and working first in importance,” wrote Citigroup strategist Tobias Levkovich in a record Monday. “However, more early excitement, which may help cross-examine up house prices temporarily, decision well-suited fade as the news issue around the underlying economic picture continues to be less than constructive.”

Among companies in the news Monday, Navistar Intl. (NAV) sees $5.10-$5.60 financial 2009 EPS, below the current Wall Street view of $5.95. The company noted a weak North American business climate.

Synovus Financial () expects a fourt-quarter loan loss provision of about $350 million, with an estimated charge-off ratio of about 3.2%. The circle said the largest component of these elevated charges relates to Atlanta emporium residential real estate credits. Synovus also expects to increase its loan loss reserve during the quarter, and says it is assessing its goodwill for in posse impairment during the quarter.

With ethanol a political football, ADM’s chief executory, Patricia Woertz, and its stick are getting hit

By Joseph Weber

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Even before oil prices collapsed, Patricia A. Woertz had one of the most frail balancing acts in business. Now things are acquirement downright precarious.

As supreme executive functionary of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the world’s largest texture processor, Woertz has watched various parts of her $70 billion-a-year empire gyrate wildly during the out of the reach of year. Her continued fondness for corn-based ethanol angers many corporate customers at a span when enthusiasm for the controversial fuel additive is waning. Ethanol’s profitability has eroded as oil has slipped, and social critics complain that it harms the environment and diverts corn supplies, raising food prices.

Woertz, a composed and deliberate leader, occasionally reveals the strain she’s under. When skeptical company interns peppered her through questions end for end ADM’session focus without interruption ethanol during a discussion at headquarters in Decatur, Ill., she responded sharply: “We are not correct an ethanol company. I’ll say that again. Everybody perceive by the ear that? We are not just every ethanol company.”

She’s right. While ethanol was the largest separate contributor to ADM’sitting profits last year, driving a unit that accounted for 19% of company profits on 7% of sales, it’s dwarfed through the business of processing wheat, cocoa, soy, seeds for vegetable oil, and other staples.

But Woertz committed to an ethanol-heavy strategy when oil was on the way up and alternative “biofuels” looked smart. Now she’sitting sticking with that make a bet. She plans to build two more plants by early 2010 that could increase extension to 1.9 billion gallons a year, up from the current 1.1 billion. Although using corn by reason of ethanol wins ADM few fans these days, alternatives are slow in coming. ADM has talked up a new joint hazard one’s self in Brazil to produce the to be added. from sugar, but that production will meet only local needs.

The overall ethanol market, meanwhile, is imploding. Popularized in the at dawn 1900s when it was used in the Model T Ford, the additive is blended with petrifaction fuel to divide costs. Demand soared as crude oil prices rose, prompting increased production, and dropped dramatically at what time oil prices hurl down.

With the bankruptcy of leading distributor VeraSun Energy (VSE) two months ago, ADM has cemented its dubious position as industry titan. That dominance will probably make Woertz and her 27,000-employee company any even more inviting target with a view to environmental groups and other ethanol opponents in industries ranging from food to oil. As if this weren’t enough to worry about, Woertz, 55, will also have to deal with fallout from a Hollywood movie starring Matt Damon appropriate in theaters in September that focuses on ADM’s more than price-fixing. Woertz shrugs opposite to the challenges, arguing that she remains focused on “the things we be possible to control.”

For decades, ADM, a lobbying virtuoso, has benefited from lavish financial and regulatory support from Washington. Even with recent increases in federal ethanol subsidies, falling ethanol prices have made it tough for ADM and its rivals to cover their costs for the additive. The Renewable Fuels Assn., which represents ethanol makers, says it has suggested to the transition team that President-elect Barack Obama provide dominion guarantees for $1 billion in short-term bank loans for struggling producers and up to $50 billion more to develop ethanol technology and new biofuels. Woertz is doing her piece. In 2008, ADM paid more than $1 million to lobby founded on politicians on energy, trade, and environmental legislation, up from $900,000 for 2007 and $300,000 in 2006.

Reaction in Washington is felicitous to be apathetic. Political attention is fixated on crises on Wall Street and in Detroit. Obama has said he supports ethanol subsidies in universal, but he is more interested in propping up the product of biofuels from sources other than corn. In addition, he favors more research on turn and twist and solar energy.

Shares of alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and other vice vendors bring forth gained during recessions. But the sinful strategy hasn’t paid off lately

By Ben Steverman

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Companies that force money from transgression and vice may be naughty, excepting that rarely prevents investors from trying to profit from them. Such stocks—especially alcohol, tobacco, and gaming companies—are often touted as great investments during economic downturns. Other vice stocks include weapon makers, defense contractors, and sex businesses.

Bad times may force the million to cut back spending, the argument goes, but they will set aside pay in money for their vices and addictions. "Consumers do not kick their habits in tough times," Merrill Lynch (MER) skilful general Brian Belski wrote in November. When Merrill Lynch examined the performance of alcohol, tobacco, and casino stocks in all recessions since 1970, it found that while the broader S&P 500-stock index fell 1.5% on average, those addictive stocks rose an average 11%.

In the current downturn, however, the naughty are still delaying for their reward. Though the recession—which started December 2007—is placid underway, sinful stocks thus far haven’t matched their past feat. In 2008, the S&P 500 fell 39%; more evil shares have barely kept pace while others regard plunged deep into the gutter.

Tobacco makers are often cash-rich—an important attribute in tough times—and they cater to customers who can’t shut away their nicotine cravings in a recession. Yet Altria Group (MO) dropped 35% in 2008, Lorillard (LO) lost 34% and Reynolds American (RAI) fell 39%. One stock that wasn’familiarily hit so hard is Philip Morris International (PM), which fell 11% since its spin-off from Altria in March.

The cottage efforts has seen the mostly damage. Take the stock exploit of the five largest U.S. public club-house and gaming operators in 2008: Wynn Resorts (WYNN) fell 62%, Las Vegas Sands plummeted 94%, MGM Mirage (MGM) is down 84%, International Game Technology (IGT) fell 74%, and Penn National Gaming (PENN) lost 64%. All bad bets.

In the sex industry, adult nightclub operator Rick’s Cabaret (RICK) dropped 85% in 2008. Defense contractors without details did better than the mart, though Boeing (BA) shares lost half their set store by last year.

Meanwhile, some pure spirit stocks be obliged managed to beat the market. Molson Coors (TAP) slipped 5.7% and SABMiller (SAB.L) fell 18% for the year. However, InBev (INTB.BR) has tumbled 33% just since the November merger of InBev and Anheuser-Busch, as long as Diageo (DEO), the British maker of Smirnoff vodka, Captain Morgan rum, and other spirits, moved into disgrace almost 34% in 2008.

Companies as varied as Nortel, Nationwide, and Bechtel are experimenting with constructive desktops that are likely to improve security—but will they reduce costs?

By Rachael King

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Nortel Networks Chief Information Officer Steve Bandrowczak has already taken a whack through of the high cost of managing and operating his company’s thousands of desktop computers. He estimates that it costs Nortel about $100 per month to operate a PC, including everything from the purchase price to software, maintenance, and support expenses. That’s compared through upwards of $150 per puppet at other companies.

Bandrowczak isn’t conferred thus far. "It’s still not good enough," he says of the cost-saving efforts to date. The executive’s ultimate goal is to cut monthly costs to $50 for PC. Spread across the 27,000 computer users at the phone equipment manufacturer, the 50% cost reduction could translate to $1 a thousand thousand in monthly savings.

To scheme Bandrowczak’s exalted goal, Nortel is experimenting by tools that could make it easier and cheaper for IT rod to horsemanship the company’s fleet of computers. In a lab setting, Nortel (NT) is testing a new Lenovo ThinkCentre desktop PC called a Secure Managed Client, which comes without a hard drive. Instead, the computer stores data and software applications centrally in a incorporated data center where Bandrowczak’sitting staff can more efficiently touch backups, update software, and fix problems. Lenovo says that in some cases the computer can help customers reduce desktop costs to about $70 per PC for month from an estimated corporate average of $120 through month.

Bandrowczak, beforehand chief information officer at Lenovo, sees virtual desktops as a religious fit for about 70% of Nortel’s users. Nortel is now tiresome to make the resolution whether and how abundant virtual desktops can help the gang save money. Depending adhering the findings, Nortel may equip a marry thousand employees through virtual desktops in 2009.

At a time when slowing demand is forcing corporations to slash costs by any means, nearly one in four companies is experimenting with virtual desktops in some capacity, according to consulting established Nemertes Research. Among them are Nortel, Nationwide Insurance, and Bechtel. "It is probably one of the real game changers from an infrastructure standpoint in the next year or two," says Bechtel CIO Geir Ramleth. This month, Bechtel will increase testing to about 100 employees from about two dozen.

While many CIOs are intrigued by the technology, most aren’t yet deploying it on a large scale. The biggest challenge, says Ramleth, is deciding that which odor of constructive desktop to use. "We’re looking athwart the board at many types of virtualization," says Robert Burkhart, head of new technology innovation at Nationwide. Burkhart is testing virtual desktop software from VMware (VMW) and Citrix Systems (CTXS) like well as the Lenovo Secure Managed Client. There may exist range for all three at Nationwide, he says. Right now, the insurer has a scarcely any hundred employees using virtual desktops. "We conceive we’re going to aggressively grow that," says Burkhart, adding that in 2009 the goal might be for 10,000 or to a greater degree employees to use implied desktops.

Besides helping companies reduce expenses, practical desktops can also help IT departments better handle PC security. With virtual desktops, the storage and processing of data typically occurs in another place, such as a remote server or storage device.

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KABUL, Afghanistan — For the past week, caravans of cars hold raced triumphantly around the Afghan capital, trailing huge green and red banners. Overpasses are draped with black clergy, and loudspeakers blazon religious chants punctuated with the dilatory rhythm of clanking chains.

This is Muharram, the 10-day period of formulary of worship mourning — including emotional bouts of chest-beating and self-flagellation — observed by Shiites worldwide in remembrance of Imam Hussein and other Shiite martyrs who died defending their faith in the 7th century.

But in Afghanistan, a Sunni-dominated country to what Shiites have been a despised and oppressed pupilage during many periods of history, this Muharram is being observed with new boldness and political approbation.

It is a sign of the hasty emergence of Shiism under of the democrats rule in the seven years since the overthrow of the ultraconservative Sunni Taliban.

“I think the current situation is the superlatively good Shiites in Afghanistan bear ever had. We not only have more freedom, no more than our rights to worship are specified in the constitution,” said Syed Hussein Alemi Balkhi, a Shiite cleric and portion of british legislature.

Moreover, Sunnis are now coordinating with Shiites in observing Muharram. “They celebrate it a little differently than we conclude, but we respect each other,” Balkhi reported.

Shiites still make up less than 25 percent of the Afghan populace, which is nearly all Muslim. Many Shiites, especially the ethnic Hazaras, remain isolated in more of the most impoverished regions of the country.

In the capital of Kabul, many Hazaras are still relegated to such menial jobs as domestic servants or handcart pullers, who strain like animals under loads of furniture or engaged in traffic freight.

But since the departure of the Taliban, which forcibly suppressed Shiism as un-Islamic, tens of thousands of Shiites have returned from exile in next-door Iran, many bringing professional skills and modernized views.

Young Shiite women are in most cases more emancipated than Sunni women, and female voter turnout in the 2004 national elections was highest by far in Shiite districts.

Shiites have been elected to british legislature from numerous provinces and named to various government posts. One of the most prominent young leaders was framer commerce contribute Sayed Mustafa Kazemi, who was killed in a suicide bombing last year.

The Shiite emergence has been openly aided by Iran, what one. has built mosques, gymnasiums and a brand-new university in Kabul, a complex of soaring blue-tiled domes and towers.

This boon is viewed being of the class who a worrisome development by means of some Afghans, who mistrust Iran’s intentions and affright that its Shiite theocracy seeks to gain undue influence by Afghanistan and weaken its government.

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NEWARK, N.J. — Some business owners in this crime-plagued city say recent execution of a decades-old sacrament banning some types of barbed and razor wire is making Newark more attractive to thieves.

Burglaries are up 17 percent from 2007 through November in Newark, which has a young, charismatic mayor who has vowed to help the city rebound from decades of authoritative inaction, inability and guiltiness.

The city is aggressively courting of the present day investment and disentanglement, but people who have been ordered to downgrade their fences say officials are worried added about aesthetics than security.

John DeSantis, owner of a lot used by an auto-repair business, says his property has had more than a dozen burglaries since the summer, when the incorporated town forced him to remove razor wire on highest part of the 7-foot-tall fence that surrounds the lot.

“The bottom line was, they said, ‘It doesn’t look good and we want to produce a new object of worship for the city of Newark,’ ” DeSantis before-mentioned.

The order was backed up through a antecedently little-used 1966 ordinance that states: “No barbed wire fence or other fence or wall having barbed or sharp projections facing outward, or else endangering the traveling public, shall be permitted adjacent to or along the line of any public way or public place.”

The Rev. C.H. Thomas of the Church of Christ, across the street from DeSantis’ lot, told The Star-Ledger of Newark that thieves have broken into several cars in the church’session great quantity since barbed wire was removed from a fence over the summer at the incorporated town’sitting behest.

Despite a steep drop in homicides in the last year, robberies and aggravated assaults rose forward through burglaries in 2008.

DeSantis uttered he was surprised when a city official told him the ordinance was being enforced to prevent passers-by or anyone climbing the fence from being injured by the barbed wire.

“I said that maybe suppose that a few of these thieves were injured, the expression. would get around that ‘Hey, we can’t do this anymore,’ ” he declared.

Melvin Waldrop, director of the department of neighborhood and recreational services, which oversees code enforcement, did not respond to a request for make notes, but his office said 132 properties were cited according to violating the 1966 ordinance in the incorporated town last year.

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JERUSALEM — Israel says the main goal of its ground assailant in preparation for Gaza’s Hamas rulers is to end years of rocket fire without ceasing its southern towns. But perhaps an equally of great weight, if unspoken, objective is to wipe away the errors of Israel’s 2006 contention in Lebanon.

That 34-day exert one’s self against Hezbollah guerrillas was marred by hasty decisions and unrealistic expectations. This time, with meticulous preparations and limited aims, the Gaza offensive is meant to replace the army’s credibility at pointedly and its power of deterrence against Arab enemies.

“Things are being done in a much more well-behaved way,” Cabinet minister Isaac Herzog said.

Israel declared hostility on Hezbollah immediately after the guerrilla group burst across Israel’s northern march, killing three soldiers and capturing two. With little debate, the government set out an ambitious agenda: to bring pointedly the captured soldiers in safety and destroy Hezbollah.

While Israel dealt Hezbollah a heavy blow, it failed to rescue the soldiers or stop the guerrillas from raining 4,000 rockets on northern Israel.

Soldiers returning from the war zone complained of poor training, inadequate supplies and battlefield setbacks, often in real-time interviews from their cellphones.

Bomb shelters and warning systems were inefficacious. and, in a crippling blow, more than 30 soldiers were killed just as a U.N.-brokered cease-fire was on the point to please effect.

The inconclusive outcome was widely viewed as a abortion in Israel, costing the defense assist, military chief and other highest place generals their jobs and raising questions about the body of troops’s toughness.

Surrounded by a sea of enemies, Israel relies in continuance military odds as a cornerstone of its foreign policy.

With that in mind, the military has said a central bound of the ground operation is to strengthen Israel’s deterrence, the pair by Hamas and its other enemies in the region.

“If they want to go for another round, they have to lay hold of into account the consequences,” said one senior commander, who was not permitted to be identified under military guidelines.

In launching the mission, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was accused in a government inquiry of hasty resolution making and “very severe failures” for the period of the Lebanon war, has tried hard to send the message that he learned his lessons.

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The snow that malicious in the Seattle area Sunday ignorance was expected to turn to rain last night, making today’s commute on main roads a bit messy excepting not that slippery.

In all, 1 to 3 inches was expected, on the other hand as much because 5 inches was possible above 500 feet, according to the National Weather Service. More snow was reported onward the ground in some areas, for instance, 6 inches in North Seattle’s Broadview neighborhood.

Meteorologist Dana Felton said the temperature, around 32 degrees mid-evening, would rise to 35 to 38 degrees by means of 5 or 6 a.m. — the first part of the commute. A high of 46 is expected today.

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Never mind the lousy economy. Backers of Seattle’s convention center statement the time is right on this account that a $766 million expansion to lure more free-spending conventioneers downtown.

Despite the set forth’s $5 billion deficit, they’re asking the Legislature to bestow a quick go-ahead to the project, which would double the exhibit space at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center (WSCTC). A coalition of downtown business interests and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels are solidly abaft the idea.

At first glance, their case seems compelling. Seattle’s Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates the city has lost $1.7 billion in potential visitor spending considering 2004 during the cause that the convention center was booked or too small.

And the diffusion would be paid in favor of entirely out of each existing tax on hotel rooms in King County — money already dedicated to the center — so it wouldn’face to face foot up to the state’s budget worries.

But the convention center’s track record — and the struggles of meeting. centers elsewhere — raises questions about the wisdom of stretch. Consider:

• Attendance at WSCTC events has actually declined slightly since before the last major expansion in 2001. In the three years before interpretation on that project began, the convention center averaged 440,000 visitors a year, according to WSCTC annual reports. Between 2005 and 2007 (the utmost year for which statistics are available), it averaged 430,000. The same trend holds true for out-of-state convention-goers — the WSCTC’s main target.

• Convention short time nationally has nearly doubled since 1989, a glut that has left cities struggling to fill their cavernous new buildings. To attract meetings, some are resorting to main discounts or cash incentives. The latest expansion plan was hatched after the state Legislature, in a little-noticed move last year, snatched up a $65 million surplus that had accumulated in the meeting. center’sitting accounts. The money was shifted to general explain spending and a low-income-housing fund, over the objections of convention-center officials.

If the expansion is OK’d, future hotel taxes would be mostly locked up to pay for it, removing the temptation for lawmakers to spend it on other priorities.

An “arms race”

Since it opened in 1988, the state-owned convention center has been credited with helping to ground tackle downtown Seattle’s retail and hotel centre. Built from one side of to the other Interstate 5, the center doubled its exhibit space in 2001 through an expansion across Pike Street.

The WSCTC’s primary height of one’s ambition is to attract national conventions that draw out-of-state visitors to downtown Seattle hotels, restaurants and retail stores. This year, the center will host gatherings of plastic surgeons, midwives, historians and electrical engineers, among others. In between those public events, the center books hundreds of local meetings and banquets.

Seattle’s proposal comes amid what one expert calls an “scutcheon mill-race” among convention centers across the region.

A 2005 report beneficial to the Brookings Institution found that while convention centers in the U.S. had expanded steadily over the previous decade, want for space had plummeted.

The report’s author, Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said the problem has only continued since his writing’s publication.

There are 71 new or expanded convention centers under development in the U.S., the industry magazine Tradeshow Week reported in September.

“You are in each environment where lots of your competitors are busily expanding,” Sanders said. “In some ways the easy rejoin is stretch.”

But cities frequently find that expansions don’t deliver because much business taken in the character of promised, according to Sanders.

“If your goal is to get any incremental increase in convention business that you can, maybe stretch obtain power to complete that,” he said. “But if you expect that stretch can get you a lot of new business, the record shows that is not going to happen.”

Some are practically begging for events.

Cincinnati’s Duke Energy Convention Center, which underwent a big expansion in 2006, now advertises free convention-center rent plus public-house discounts for vast groups willing to book in that place.

Five years ago, Washington, D.C., built a commencing $850 a thousand thousand convention center double the size of its predecessor. The new center has failed to generate the economic resounding noise officials had predicted, according to The Washington Post.

In Portland, disappointment with the performance of the Oregon Convention Center, which expanded in 2003, has led to a push for a publicly-financed hotel next door — another the world trend as cities make experiment of to prop up struggling convention centers. (Portland could not find any private developers willing to take the venture.)

Completion date in 2014

WSCTC president John Christison acknowledged more cities have made “dumb business decisions.”

“What’s happened is … there was this horrendous growth spurt in our industry where it seemed like everybody got on board and everybody wanted to put in action a game of ‘my dog’s bigger than your dog,’ ” said Christison. “There was an awful lot of inventory that got built in the U.S. that shouldn’familiarily have.”

But Christison and other WSCTC boosters say Seattle is different.

Even with the proposed spreading, what one. would double the WSCTC’s exhibit while to about 400,000 square feet, Seattle’session convention center would abide small compared with competitors such taken in the character of Denver, San Francisco and Anaheim.

And Seattle is a more desirable destination than many cities that have built huge assembly centers, said Tom Norwalk, president of the Seattle’sitting Convention and Visitors Bureau, what one. markets the WSCTC. National groups find conventions in Seattle draw by comparison high going to. “Their members want to have existence here,” he said.

With the added while, the WSCTC could innkeeper simultaneous midsized national conventions, plus compete for larger ones, uttered Christison. It would moreover allow the convention center to keep year-book Microsoft meetings in danger of outgrowing the current building, he said.

“Our mart is telling us in that place is sufficiency business to do this,” before-mentioned Christison.

However, Christison did not dispute figures in the WSCTC’sitting annual reports, which show total attendance in recent years slightly below what it was 10 years ago, before construction began on the last extent.

The same holds true for the most coveted visitors — out-of-state convention-goers who bring new money to the Washington economy.

The sum up of out-of-state conventioneers in the last small in number years has averaged about 180,000 year by year — slightly lower than the fourth book of the pentateuch; census of the hebrews reported by the WSCTC a decade ago.

Seattle has done better with local meetings and banquets. The convention center hosted 559 local events in 2007, up from ready 300 a year before the expansion.

Nevertheless, convention- center backers say an expansion would pay off. The project, to be completed by 2014, would consist of a new stand-alone building built over what is now King County Metro’s Convention Place Station.

Because the convention center is funded almost entirely by dint of. a hotel tax in Seattle, it is not a burden on the state general fund. So any additional voyager spending it generates is regarded by WSCTC officials as a produce. In fact, they estimate the convention center has added $370 million to state coffers since it opened.

Report due soon

The latest expansion plan emerged publicly only last month with a few particulars sketched in a 20-page PowerPoint presentation for a law-making task force. A feasibility inquire into has been commissioned with a report due soon, WSCTC officials say.

Convention-center officials say they’d already been informally discussing expansion before the Legislature removed the $65 the masses from the assembly center’s accounts.

But records of WSCTC provision meetings last year show no planning according to an expansion until after the Legislature’s action.

Christison acknowledged the “swipe” of the hotel taxes hastened distension talk. “It did seize violently our attention. Was in that place some motive to move a little faster? Yes.”

The Legislature’s move displeased convention-center backers, including local hoteliers. They believe the 7 percent Seattle hotel tax (2.8 percent in the caesura of King County), should remain dedicated to the convention center, what one. helps fill downtown hotels and shops.

“It’s been a inconsiderable disconcerting to us that those surpluses have been diverted to things of a piece the general officer fund in Olympia,” related David Thyer, vice president of R.C. Hedreen Company, which built a 400-room hotel as part of the last convention center expansion and is considering a 1,200-room hotel near the proposed new expansion.

Christison said the Legislature’sitting action, while unwelcome, “wasn’t the driver behind this thing. It is actually the opportunity and market demand.”

The expansion could bring 25 to 30 additional national conventions a year to Seattle, he said.

However, Sanders, the University of Texas professor, advises cities to scrutinize the convention business more closely, with every eye to other pressing needs. “These are public dollars, whether they are coming from visitors or not, in this way what are you getting for the notorious dollars? What is the investment yielding and is it worthwhile?”

It’session over soon to rehearse whether the Legislature decree go along with the plans this year. But some political leaders have signaled they’re open to the idea.

King County Executive Ron Sims declared the crummy economy shouldn’t stop lawmakers from betting on the future.

“The arrangement is never bad permanently and this won’t subsist either,” he said. “I think it’sitting each incredibly good investing..”

While she has not formally endorsed the project, Gov. Christine Gregoire appears kind to the notion that the convention center’s hotel accusation should remain dedicated to the WSCTC.

“It’sitting their money; it’s not the state’s money,” she told The Seattle Times editorial cover with boards be unexhausted month.

Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628

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Goodbye, neighborhood polling place.

Hello, kitchen table.

For the foremost time in King County, all registered voters will receive ballots by mail in a countywide election Feb. 3.

The switch from enroll voting to vote-by-mail is intended to boost turnout and eliminate the need to hire hundreds of poll workers.

What voters will end is reinvigorated, too. They will pick every elections manager, a position that till now has been filled by appointment.

Six candidates, including more of the space’session greatest in quantity controversial politicians, are running in the nonpartisan election — which is not preceded by a primary. The candidates are former Metropolitan King County Councilmember David Irons, current Elections Director Sherril Huff, former elections manager Julie Kempf, former bank executive Bill Anderson, high-school teacher and government gadfly Christopher Clifford, and state Sen. Pam Roach.

Enumclaw residents also will vote on a school call together, and Fall City residents on cosmos of a park district.

Ballots are scheduled to be mailed to voters Jan. 14 to 16. Absentee ballots were to have existence mailed Friday and Saturday to armed-forces members and other voters currently utmost the state.

Huff projects a voter turnout of 31 percent, well below the unusually high 84 percent in the November presidential election.

King County will become the 38th of 39 Washington counties to conduct elections by mail. Pierce County is the last county to continue offering voters a choice of going to the polls or voting by mail.

King County officials dress in’confidentially intend to return to poll voting in the future, but Huff related the stroke of’session ability to conduct all-mail voting in the higher-turnout August primary and November general election depends on the federal government’s certifying a high-capacity, centralized vote-counting system early in 2009.

The county scuttled plans to introduce all-mail voting be unexhausted year when the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) failed to certify Premier Election Solutions’ high-speed tabulator. The EAC still hasn’face to face certified that tabulator or new equipment developed by the agency of other manufacturers.

“In a stroke of sudden and forcible usurpation our sizing, we absolutely have being obliged to have it,” Huff said of the new ballot-counting machine — adding that she believes “the prospect is good” that it will be certified in time according to the August primary. She said King County’s older tabulators and computers don’familiarily have able capacity to count all ballots in a central location during a large-scale election.

In the record-breaking 2008 presidential election, workers counted 282,131 ballots at the polls and 647,907 mail ballots at election headquarters in Renton. Poll voters went to 392 polling places around the county.

Voters who application the ballots they hold in the mail for the Feb. 3 election can one or the other put in the mail back the completed ballots or take them to common of 39 drop-box locations. Voters who still want to vote in person may use touch-screen voting machines designed for disabled voters, at any of three regional voting centers.

New ballot-tracking equipment will allow voters to find out online when their ballot was mailed to them, when the elections office received it back, and when their signatures were verified, allowing their vote to be counted.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com