My celebration of ThURLsday today begins with a link to this story at UtterlyBoring, which in turn links to Bend.com. The Deschutes County Sheriff has imposed "performance standards" (meaning quotas) to push his troopers to write more tickets. It reminded me of when the highest-paid public official in Oregon was the police chief of Jordan Valley, a small town that straddles a turn in Highway 95 in Malheur County, because he was paid on commission. He paid the costs of traffic patrol from his own pocket, and in exchange got to keep all the net ticket revenue. As hardly any through traffic obeyed the "Speed 25" signs that set off the eight blocks of Highway 95 within the city from the 123 miles in unincorporated Malheur County, the chief of police could set his own hours and live quite well. The Oregonian reported that the chief made $120,000 in a year in which Governor Atiyeh made $95,000, and the next legislative session put a stop to this.
My second selection is this post from Andy at Rooftop describing Vice President Cheney's Q & A session in Portland. Note the Vice President's answer to a question about No Child Left Behind, in which he managed to include "harken," "Bush," and "Texas" in the same sentence, perhaps subconsciously thinking about Harken Energy.
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