WINNERS 1. We realize it's not over 'til the fat lady sinks, but after a month of maddening delays and dramatic reversals, the star-crossed tragedy of the New Carissa seems to have reached its final act. As WW goes to press, the vessel's bow is being towed to a watery grave 248 miles off the coast, while Coos Bay and North Bend are squabbling over who gets to keep the ship's anchors. Enough already! The entire state will be a winner as soon as the last rivet of the cursed wreck is squared away in Davy Jones' locker. 2. Intel looked smart this week, agreeing to settle anti-trust charges before trial. Whatever the merits of the government's case against the company, the battering that trust-busters have inflicted on Microsoft shows how painful and expensive a public airing of corporate strategy can be. 3. He may have been dethroned as House Speaker, but Rep. Lynn Lundquist was at center stage in Salem last week. A panel assembled by the gangly Powell Butte rancher to study education costs released its numbers, giving much-needed ammunition to those seeking more school funding from the Legislature.

LOSERS 1. He got beat up in The Oregonian's editorial pages for two consecutive Sundays (first in a guest column by state labor commish Jack Roberts and then by the O's "liberal" columnist, David Sarasohn), but the worst may yet be in store for Gov. John Kitzhaber. The state's largest daily shows all the hallmarks of setting up for a big "Where's the Leadership?" story. 2. You would think that the drivers Tri-Met employs to transport disabled people would come under much scrutiny. Apparently not. Tri-Met faces a lawsuit after a driver hired by a Tri-Met subcontractor, A1 Medtrax of Beaverton, pleaded guilty to raping a 31-year-old mentally disabled woman following her counseling appointment last March. Turns out the driver, Daniel Richard Robertson, 47, was a convicted murderer who served nine years in an Oregon prison for strangling a man in 1973. 3. Despite a month of heavy campaigning, Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group lost the annual vote to retain about $13,000 in student fees at Lewis & Clark College next year. Last week's student vote (279 for, 367 against) represents a severe blow to OSPIRG, which lost funding at the University of Oregon last year. OSPIRG's only remaining campus offices are at Lane Community College and Portland State University.

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Willamette Week | originally published March 10, 1999