New Year’s Resolutions
Dear Resolute Readers:
Every year on the first of January, I make a few New Year's
resolutions that are designed to help me become a better person. This
year, I shall share those resolutions with you. 1) I shall maintain a
sunnier attitude by not thinking of the government of the District of
Columbia. 2) When I do think of the government of the District of
Columbia, I shall think better of it. 3) I shall trust the elected
officials of the District to put the interests of citizens and residents
above those of campaign contributors and special interests. 4) I shall
take the mayor of the District of Columbia at his word, and have
confidence that he would never mislead the citizens. 5) I shall believe
the city's departments and agencies when they say that city services,
particularly schools and public safety and health services, are
constantly improving.
Every year on the first of January, I faithfully break my New Year's
resolutions. This year it took even less time than the year that I swore
off holiday eggnog. That one lasted until lunch.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Emergency situation — a friend collapsed and needed to go to the
emergency room (via ambulance) at 3:30 a.m. on December 26, 2002. My
friend's doctors and hospital tests had been taken several days before,
so I asked the ambulance driver if we could go to Howard University
Hospital. He told me that we may not be able to go to HU because it was
closed earlier in the evening — imagine my surprise — closed why?
Hospital emergency rooms close when they have too many ER patients, and
they route ambulances to another hospital. But we were in luck, Howard
was actually open to ambulatory patients. Arriving in the hospital ER,
there were patients laying in the hallways waiting for service and they
still there when I left several hours later. I assumed that this was a
HU problem on a holiday, and that they were possible understaffed.
But on December 27, 2002, my physician sent me to the George
Washington University Emergency Room and I became one of those patients
laying in the hallway waiting for treatment. Five hours later I was
still laying there (along with other patients) while more people
continued to arrive.
What has happened in DC?
[The domino effect causing overcrowding and frequent closing of DC's
remaining hospital emergency rooms was predicted two years ago by
critics of Mayor Williams's healthcare plan, which shuttered DC General
Hospital and relied on the inadequate facilities at Greater Southeast
Hospital. For more information, attend the meeting of the Cleveland Park
Citizens Association (see the classified ad below), or read some of the
extensive background information at http://www.dcwatch.com/issues/health.htm
and http://www.dcwatch.com/issues/pbc.htm.
— Gary Imhoff]
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Tomorrow, January 2, at 10:30 a.m., Mayor Williams and Councilmembers
Cropp, Ambrose, Catania, Graham, Patterson, Orange, and Mendelson will
be sworn in at the Warner Theater. Although the ceremony is open to the
public, nearly one third (588) of the theater's 1900 seats have been
reserved for special guests. And most of the streets surrounding the
theater — E, Pennsylvania, and 13th — will be closed to traffic in
order to provide parking for those special guests. (The swearing-in
ceremony for the Statehood Congressional delegation and Advisory
Neighborhood Commissioners will take place at 1:00 p.m. in Room 33 of
the Washington Convention Center. The newly reelected Board of Education
members, Peggy Cooper Cafritz, William Lockridge, and Tommy Wells, will
be sworn in on Tuesday, January 7, at 6:30 p.m., at Sumner School, 17th
and M Streets, NW.)
Tomorrow's inaugural activities will cost approximately $195,000,
including a breakfast ($40,000), morning ceremony ($20,000), and evening
celebration ($110,000). (The additional $25,000 is for
“miscellaneous.”) Major contributors include PEPCO ($25,000), Abe
Pollin/MCI Center ($10,000), Chevy Chase Bank ($25,000), Fannie Mae
($25,000), RLJ Development ($10,000), Black Entertainment Television
($10,000), ACS State and Local Solutions (a.k.a. Lockheed Martin)
($15,000), and Comcast ($25,000).
In his inaugural address on January 2, 1999, Anthony Williams
detailed his vision and plan of action for Washington (http://www.dcwatch.com/mayor/990102a.htm):
“We join hands today united by a simple vision: Our citizens deserve
the best city in America. The very best. That means strong schools, safe
streets, clean communities, affordable housing, and reliable
transportation. It means access to health care. It means quality
services for seniors. It means a rich social and cultural life. It means
vibrant economies downtown and in the neighborhoods. It means true
inclusion, a seat at the table for all.” As Mayor Williams begins a
second term and prepares to deliver another inaugural address full of
promises, citizens may wish to review the 1999 address against the
record of the Williams administration over the past four years.
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It is time for DC to fully fund ANC 6A. We have a new redistricted
commission this year, with only one incumbent commissioner from last
year's 6A commission. The Commissioners are not paid and should not have
to pay out of their own pockets for meeting spaces and copying of
meeting notices and minutes. None of the current ANC 6A Commissioners is
responsible for the lousy books and documentation of the previous
commission. Neither they nor the citizens living in the district should
be punished for the past behavior of a few commissioners that no longer
represent us.
ANC 6A has had a media-documented troubled history for many years.
Responsible oversight from the City Council has been sorely lacking in
the matter. ANC 6A did not received their annual disbursement of funds
from the city for last two years due to the severe lack of documentation
and required financial reports. Finally last year, DC Auditor Deborah
Nichols stepped in and took the ANC's checkbook. There had been reported
mismanagement of funds over a period of many, many years. I don't think
that she has much of a choice; an investigation by the city's auditor
discovered more than $30,000 in questionable disbursements over a period
of previous years and she was not getting the current required financial
reports from the 6A Commission treasurer. For some details of the city
audit, use the search function at http://www.voiceofthehill.com.
The bottom line is that it took too long to clean up this mess, and now
the wrong people are being punished for it. We have a new ANC, and we
want our commissioners to have the assets that they do need to do their
jobs.
[The audit report itself is available at http://64.49.68.206/frames/DCA/Reports/DCA1502.pdf.
— Gary Imhoff]
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North Lincoln Park saw several promising developments the year past.
After two decades as an under used, decrepit and eventually empty
building, the historic Lovejoy School finally began the process of
conversion to loft condominiums. The developer, Winter Properties,
worked with folks in the neighborhood over five years to bring the
project to this point. Winter hung in there despite the frustrations of
dealing with a barely functioning city government. Neighbors are now
working to develop a small park on the remaining property at the Lovejoy
site. Winter supports these efforts as well.
For years, North Lincoln Park residents have enjoyed a free monthly
newsletter, The Buzz, that covers neighborhood news. This past year, an
enterprising neighbor, Marc Borberly, started a weekly publication, The
Corner Forum, to cover the northern end of North Lincoln Park. The
Corner Forum focuses more on interviews with residents of the half
dozen block area it covers and supplements The Buzz. This is a
great example of how desktop publishing and the Internet have stimulated
local news sources to fill in the major gaps in the Post's ever
diminishing DC coverage.
We have a new outdoor sculpture across from Maury School, just off
the confluence of Tennessee and Constitution Avenues and 13th Street,
NE. It is a part of the public sculpture initiative of the DC Commission
on Fine Arts, and is a nice focal point for the area in front of the
school. We look forward to more positive developments in the year ahead.
On a more global, but still local, note, a special thanks to Mark David
Richards for his contributions to the mail.
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Trash/Recycling Pickup “One Day Delayed”
Joan Eisenstodt, jeisen@aol.com
On December 24, 2002, the information in the Post said that trash and
recycling pick up would be delayed a day from the regular pick up. Our
twice-a-week pick ups are Monday and Thursday, so we thought that meant
that we'd have pick up on Friday. We didn't put the trash out and there
were the DC trash trucks picking up on Thursday last week!
I called the District and was told that "one day delayed"
meant that they would pick up a day late and that day and on Friday! I
dunno, I could not figure it out. We did put recycling out for Friday
pick up (and it was) and we saw the trash trucks again on Friday and on
Saturday.
This week? We're putting it all out on Wednesday night and will see
what happens!
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Can’t Figure It Out
Gabe Goldberg, gabe@gabegold.com
Ed T. Barron said, “It's hard for me to figure out why any of the
District's good teachers, those effective teachers with good skills,
would ever join a teachers' union. Unions, by definition, want all their
members treated equally. Hey, bulletin, bulletin. People are not equal
in skills, effectiveness, motivation, and performance.”
Hey, bulletin, bulletin. Not all employers, not all unions, are
equal. My father was a charter member of the New York Newspaper Guild
— when you got fired for belonging. Because there were no protections
for employees, employers fired whomever they wanted whenever they felt
like it. Times have changed; industries have changed; unions have
changed. Some companies run fine without unions; some unions are
corrupt. But some unions help employees by making sure they're treated
fairly, not identically.
Tarring all unions because you don't like one union is silly. In
other notes you haven't been exactly cheerful about DC Public Schools'
management. An “effective teacher with good skills” might join a
union to deal with less than stellar management, to prevent abuses, to
ensure fair treatment. Or do you believe that “effective teachers with
good skills” are magically assured of fair treatment at the hands of
DCPS? Just because their union let them down doesn't mean that the idea
of unions is bad — or that there shouldn't be unions for public
employees. Neither does your personal history at one company that ran
fine without a union. Bulletin, bulletin — a sample of one career
doesn't justify concluding much about other people, other industries,
other decades.
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Unions
John Whiteside, johnwhiteside at earthlink dot net
Ed Barron tells us that “unions, by definitions, want all their
members treated equally.” This is an invented, nonsensical definition.
I'm glad that Ed had the good fortune to work for an employer that
treated its employees well enough that there was no move toward
unionization, and I agree that there are plenty of corrupt unions, but
nevertheless Ed seems to have invented a new definition of union. Unions
are simply a group of workers who are organizing to bargain
collectively. Since a single worker has very little clout to negotiate
with a large company, unions allow workers to use their combined power.
That's how unions made such practices as the forty hour work week,
paid vacations, and workplace safety regulations common practice. I'm
not sure why, at the dawn of a new year, Ed is pining away for the good
old days when workers could be required to work long hours with few
benefits in settings where they were more likely to be injured or
killed. But reject the entire idea of unions, as Ed does, and you should
be ready to reject the progress that organization of workers has
brought.
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Here Are A Few Clues, Mr. Barron
Brian Vogel, brian_vogel at mail dot com
Ed Barron says that it's difficult for him to figure out why DC's
good teachers would ever join a teachers union, and then goes on to
compare/contrast careers in education and the aerospace industry. I have
news for him: there is no comparison. The aerospace industry is (or
perhaps was, given the current economy) looking for individuals in far
shorter supply than teachers, but for different reasons.
Salaries have been artificially deflated for educators for as long as
anyone can remember. Collective bargaining has been one of the few
semi-effective tools for increasing wages. Teaching, contrary to much
popular opinion, has no easily quantifiable, discretely measurable
“product.” School administrators (and, sadly, the public at large)
use this fact quite handily in attempts to make teachers look like
incompetents.
I will also add that were it not for unions in many industries, the
American worker (both white and blue collar) would not be blessed with
40-hour work weeks, vacation time, health insurance, and other fringe
benefits. Those “paternalistic” companies had each of these pulled
from their concerned claws via the force of collective bargaining. When
teachers begin to be treated as professionals, then, perhaps, the day of
the teachers' union will be past. That's a long way off.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Cleveland Park, DC’s Health Care Safety Net,
January 4
Ann Loikow, johnl@erols.com
The regular monthly meeting of the Cleveland Park Citizens
Association will be held on Saturday, January 4, at 10:15 a.m., at the
Cleveland Park Library, Connecticut Avenue and Newark Street, NW. The
topic will be DC’s health care safety net. Will it be there for you
when you most need it? Join us in this vital discussion. It’ll be good
for your health. Speakers will be David Catania, At-Large Member, DC
Council; Sharon Baskerville, Executive Director, DC Primary Care
Association; and Robert Brandon, Board Member, CareFirst Watch.
A panel discussion of the status of health care for DC’s most
vulnerable residents and all of us. Why are we one of the few large
cities without a public hospital? Is that a bad thing? Have
"contracting out" and “privatization” corrupted an
essential government function? How good is our safety net? What should
we be doing about it? What is the role of managed care in the safety
net? Would the proposed merger of CareFirst into a for-profit
corporation be a disaster for the safety net? And most important, find
out why this isn’t just about other people. It’s about you.
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Sandra Thurman at the Woman’s National
Democratic Club, January 14
Pat Bitondo, pbitondo@aol.com
Sandra Thurman will speak at the Woman's National Democratic Club,
1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, on January 14, 2003, at 12:30 p.m. Ms.
Thurman is President of the International AIDS Trust and was formerly
the director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy in the
Clinton administration. (Mr. Clinton and Mr. Nelson Mandela are
Co-Chairs of the IAT Advisory Board). Ms. Thurman will present an
overview of the pandemic and reveal plans to bring about leadership and
resources to effectively battle this disease. How will the US leverage
support from international agencies to educate and develop programmatic
approaches to the problem? She will examine the global security impact
of HIV/AIDS on nations and the imperative of shaping and adequate US
response.
Proceeds from this luncheon are tax-deductible and will be used to
help fund the WNDC activities at Nevell Thomas School. For reservations,
call 986-2791 and ask for Patricia Fitzgerald.
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CLASSIFIEDS — HOUSING
NW DC/Palisades/MacArthur Boulevard: professional, considerate,
responsible female seeks to share furnished two bedroom, one bathroom
apartment; upper flat of house. Great front porch complete with wicker
furniture; near Georgetown University, American University, French
Embassy, German Embassy, Sibley Hospital and Georgetown Hospital.
Dishwasher, air conditioning; washer, dryer, and storage in basement.
Security deposit: $725; rent: $725, including utilities except for own
phone. Available now, short term okay. Unfortunately, no pets. Call
363-9865; E-mail candace_b_2000@yahoo.com.
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