PORT OF SEATTLE

► In the Seattle Times — Seattle should listen to shipping industry’s concerns about proposed arena (editorial) — The Port of Seattle, BNSF Railway, the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association and the Manufacturing Industrial Council have raised alarms about the effect of a third sports venue on the movement of freight. The city of Seattle should listen to these voices and take them seriously.

EDITOR’S NOTE — The Puget Sound Ports Council, Maritime Trades Department AFL-CIO also has expressed these concerns about preserving and protecting a working waterfront and the many family-wage jobs it supports.

► In the P.S. Business Journal — Port of Seattle gains Japanese-bound export service — Cargo ships sporting the MOL logo will soon be passing through the Port of Seattle for the first time since 2008. The new MOL route, which will sail from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C., and then on to Tokyo and China, should offer more outbound space for state exports of agricultural and forest products.

EARLY RETURNS

► In today’s Columbian — Special delivery: 60 tons of sustaining generosity — Local postal employees and community volunteers collected about 60 tons of food Saturday during the letter carriers’ annual food drive. And it comes when the food bank’s shelves have been depleted.

► In today’s (Longview) Daily News — ‘Stamp Out Hunger’ food drive collects 20 tons — Longview and Kelso postal carriers collected 41,570 pounds of dry goods residents stacked beside mailboxes during Saturday’s National Association of Letter Carriers food drive. The food goes to the Help Warehouse food bank run by Lower Columbia Community Action Program.

STATE GOVERNMENT

► In today’s Olympian — 258 at Evergreen dodge state pay cuts — Under an agreement with the WFSE, the school will reduce its payroll costs by 3% using attrition, voluntary furloughs and other moves to trim about $462,000. That means 258 line workers — who were the only staffers on the 700-employee institution facing pay reductions — will avoid the cuts.

► In the NY Times — Cutbacks hurt a state’s response to whooping cough — Washington state has declared an epidemic and public health officials say the numbers are staggering: 1,284 cases through early May, the most in at least three decades and 10 times last year’s total at this time, 128. The response to the epidemic has been hampered by the recession, which has left state and local health departments on the front lines of defense weakened by years of sustained budget cuts.

► In Sunday’s Seattle Times — Poor marks for some school cuts (Danny Westneat column) — Austerity is forcing some hard choices, but so much of the education cutting seems slipshod, while the spending remains fad-driven.

ELECTION

► In today’s (Everett) Herald — County official to run for month-long Congress post — Snohomish County Council Chairman Brian Sullivan said Sunday he’s agreed to be the Democratic Party’s candidate in this year’s special election to replace former U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee.

► In today’s Washington Post — Ryan budget still an issue in congressional races — More than a year after the proposal’s initial release, Republican candidates continue to find themselves on the defensive about what the plan will actually do.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Um, this will be the first election since Republicans — including all of them in Washington state — voted (repeatedly) to replace Medicare’s guaranteed benefits with a voucher for private insurance. Of course, it will be an election issue!

NATIONAL

► In The Hill — Report says 230,000 unemployed lost benefits over the weekend — All told, 409,300 long-term unemployed Americans in 27 states have lost upward of 20 weeks of federal unemployment benefits by this past Saturday, even as the many state jobless rates remain high.

► In today’s Washington Post — GOP state officials stall on setting up health insurance marketplaces — In about two dozen states across the country, the insurance marketplaces at the heart of the 2010 health-care law remain in limbo, with Republican governors or lawmakers who oppose the statute refusing to act until the Supreme Court decides its constitutionality.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Thankfully, for health insurance consumers, Washington state’s exchange will be ready to go.

► At AFL-CIO Now — Violence, threats increase in Colombia ahead of trade deal start — Rather than advancing human rights in Colombia, the announcement that the trade deal with the U.S. would be implemented seems to be increasing the complacency of the Colombian government — with devastating effects on Colombia’s population.

► From AP — Gov. Brown pushes tax hike as California’s money woes deepen — The Democratic governor warns of further cuts to an already-battered public education system if voters rejected a tax increase in a ballot initiative this fall.

► In The Hill — Warren: Wall Street waging ‘guerrilla war’ against regulations — Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren repeated calls for JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to step down as a director of the New York Fed and said the loss of $2 billion in errant trades at the banking giant was proof Wall Street had not learned any lessons from the financial crisis.

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► In today’s NY Times — This is why we regulate (Paul Krugman column) — Businessmen are human — although the lords of finance have a tendency to forget that — and they make money-losing mistakes all the time. That in itself is no reason for the government to get involved. But banks are special, because the risks they take are borne, in large part, by taxpayers and the economy as a whole. And what JPMorgan has just demonstrated is that even supposedly smart bankers must be sharply limited in the kinds of risk they’re allowed to take on.

The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 9 a.m. These links are functional at the date of posting, but sometimes expire.