We survived!

[January 14th, 2004]

WINNERS:

Portland's crippling BLIZZARD APOCALYPSE produced a few unlikely winners. First, local TV news scored when viewers had little choice but to watch the ridiculously self-indulgent coverage of the storm. Then we have SUV owners, who saw a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm turn into a permanent justification for their needless vanity-mobiles. Finally, slackers, who seldom lose anyway, finally found a semi-legit excuse to stay home and watch Braveheart.

Despite the airport's shutdown due to the aforementioned BLIZZARD APOCALYPSE, the Port of Portland celebrated this week. Northwest Airlines will start a nonstop flight from Portland to Tokyo in June, a huge boost to the city's international business prestige.

Intrepid G-men nailed three alleged scam artists accused of bilking thousands of Oregonians out of about $200 million. The trio allegedly lured investors by promising returns of up to 300 percent. At least they spent the money on cool stuff--like palaces in Uganda.

LOSERS:

Oregon: a state of rugged, never-say-die individualists, right? A few inches of snow had something to say about that notion. The Spirit of the Oregon Trail suffered a huge blow when a storm many cities would have laughed at managed to paralyze the entire metro area. Has anybody here ever heard of a snow shovel?

State and local child welfare workers face the wrath of Clackamas County mom Lori Pond, who slapped down a federal lawsuit demanding $9.75 million for alleged bungling in the case of her daughter Ashley. Ashley disappeared from the Ponds' Oregon City apartment complex two years ago this month, apparently slipping through the child-protection system's cracks after she reported sexual abuse at the hands of the man now accused of killing her, Ward Weaver.

Against the advice of its own experts, the federal government until recently allowed cows to dine on recycled cow parts, opening up the door to mad cow disease. And now, as a result, hundreds of those same cows are being victimized a second time, going to the slaughterhouse even earlier than God (or maybe it's the beef industry) intended. Last week, as part of the government's crackdown on potentially insane bovines, 450 Northwestern calves and the first of 129 cows went to that big pasture in the sky.

Portland police detectives ended the year with a 54 percent success rate for solving homicides--well short of the bureau's goal of 75 percent. This will up the heat on Chief Derrick Foxworth to transfer sleuths from neighborhood crimes to dangerous ones to address what PPB gumshoes describe as a woeful state of understaffing.