Neither fair nor balanced--guaranteed.

[November 5th, 2003] WINNERS

Security personnel at PDX airport were high on life after playing host to a huge drug bust. Acting on a "suspicious activity" tip that pilot Paul David Carter had paid cash for a $600 gas bill in Canada this summer, U.S. Customs officials found 100,000 Ecstasy tablets--worth an estimated $2.5 million--in his Piper Aerostar. Remember, kids: When transporting drugs, always pay for gas with credit!

From the pathetic silver-lining department: The poorest of Oregon's poor were thrilled to learn that the Beaver State is now only the second-hungriest state in the nation, after new statistics showed a slight drop in the average number of people going hungry every day. Take that, starving people of Oklahoma!

Utility-reform activists were feeling good when they announced that they have gathered enough signatures to put people's utility districts on the ballot in Washington and Clackamas counties next spring.

Chalk up another victory for Portland's powerful teachers' union . Back in March, city and county officials caved to the union's strike threat and forced the school board to preserve union health benefits. Government penny-pinchers then formed a task force to contain benefit costs, but that group's report last week made no mention of requiring teachers to pick up part of their growing insurance tab.

LOSERS

Great...now we need a new neighborhood to gentrify. Northwest Portland residents felt the dagger of defeat plunge a little deeper when developer Dick Singer announced that construction could begin as early as next year on one of the clogged neighborhood's six planned parking garages.

...but they didn't suffer alone. Change-fearing denizens of the Washington Park area were pummeled by cultural sensitivity when the Portland City Council voted unanimously to erect a Holocaust memorial in their neighborhood. The city approved the $800,000 project after an eight-year wrangle with residents over traffic and safety concerns.

Oregon's commercial fishermen mourned the decline of their salty livelihood as Uncle Sam announced a coastwide buyout that will sideline a third of the state's trawler fleet by year's end. While ship owners are sitting pretty, with compensation averaging nearly $500,000 apiece, hundreds of deckhands and captains will be looking for work.