Though Sarah Palin depicts herself as a pit bull fighting good-old-boy politics, in her years as mayor she and her friends received special benefits more typical of small-town politics as usual, an Associated Press investigation shows.
When Palin needed to sell her house during her last year as Wasilla mayor, she got the city to sign off on a special zoning exception -- and did so without keeping a promise to remove a potential fire hazard....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a stunning vote that shocked the capital and worldwide markets, the House of Representatives on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue for the U.S. financial system, ignoring urgent warnings from President George W. Bush and congressional leaders of both parties that the economy could nosedive without it. The Dow Jones industrials plunged nearly 800 points, the most ever for a single day.
Democratic and Republican leaders alike pledged to try again, though the Democrats said Republican lawmakers needed to provide more votes. Bush huddled with his economic advisers about a next step. The House was to reconvene on Thursday instead of adjourning for the year as planned.
Stocks began falling even before the 228-205 vote to reject the bill was officially announced on the House floor. The 777-point decline for the day surpassed the 721-point previous record, on the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, though in percentage terms it was well short of the drops on Black Monday of October 1987 and at the start of the Depression in the 1930s.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson looked grim afterward, if not shaken. "We need to work as quickly as possible," he said. "We need to get something done." He went on: "We need to put something back together that works." Looking to inject a note of confidence into a day of high anxiety, he offered: "Our banking system has been holding up very well, considering all of the pressures." ...

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Many people look down on construction workers. In fact experts predict the shortage of construction workers will worsen over the next decade unless steps are taken to reverse the trend.
Ironically, the Pacific Northwest is in the midst of a golden age of urban expansion. In Seattle and Portland, billions of dollars has been spent on the reconstruction of city centers and housing communities over the past 10 years.... 

Many people look down on construction workers. In fact experts predict the shortage of construction workers will worsen over the next decade unless steps are taken to reverse the trend. Ironically, the Pacific Northwest is in the midst of a golden age of urban expansion....

A year ago this September, the outside of the Billy Webb Elks Lodge looked a lot like it had for the last several decades — rundown. But times change, and the old Elks Lodge is changing with it. The windows are no longer covered with large sheets of plywood; the roof is no longer leaking water nine months out of the year; the weather-worn siding has been replaced; and other work is on the way....

Gwendolyn Chambliss of Seattle has been honored with Mayor Greg Nickles' 2008 Small Business Award. Her business, the GP Institute of Cosmetology....

Poised to launch itself into a major growth phase, The Urban League of Portland is tapping one of the most dynamic women in the Pacific Northwest to drive their grassroots expansion.
Sunshine Dixon – an artist, activist, organizer, writer, businesswoman – is the League's new community organizer.
She'll be presiding over the Urban League's Do the Right Thing Literacy Festival this Saturday, Sept. 20 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the North Portland Library on North Killingsworth Street.
"I think it's amazing that the word 'together' also says 'to get there,'" Dixon says. "I want to see the community come together, I want to see partnerships develop; I want to see people move forward beyond their barriers."
Born and raised in Oregon, Dixon spent her childhood in the family home just off North Killingsworth Street. She attended Humboldt Elementary School, Ockley Green Middle School, Jefferson High School, Portland Community College and Portland State University.
A turning point in her life was when a local adult recruited her to volunteer with a nonprofit group for the first time. ...

The federal agency responsible for preparing the country to cope with terrorist threats and natural disasters, the Department of Homeland Security, is one of the least accountable and poorest managed federal agencies.
That's according to the administration's own ratings. The 2008 President's Management Agenda Scorecard, published June 30, which measures the efficiency of federal agencies, found that on three out of five performance measures the Department of Homeland Security has "serious flaws." Only the U.S. Veterans Administration was rated equally poorly in three areas.  The Department of Defense was the only other federal agency to receive the lowest rating for its efforts to improve performance. Rep. Peter DeFazio, the single Oregonian in Congress assigned to a Homeland Security Committee, said the department is too large and disparate to function well.
"Homeland Security has been disastrous," DeFazio told the Skanner. "It's a $40 billion bureaucracy.

Portland Development CommissionThe Urban Renewal Agency for the City of Portland, OregonPortland is…

Being the first in the nation to do something is never easy. And Monique Hall's voter registration efforts are no exception.
The mother of eight children is helping to organize a voter registration drive lead by the Parent Policy Council at a number of Portland-area Head Start locations