It’s Genetic

Dear Genetically Sound Readers:

Every once in a while, though too rarely, I report on a particularly good day that shows how much fun living in this town can be. (I wish others would do this occasionally, too.) Today, Dorothy and I had a lunch buffet downtown at the Bombay Palace. All their dishes are good, but the butter chicken, tandoori chicken in a tomato-based sauce, is outstanding. Then we walked to DAR Constitution Hall, where the Three Mo' Tenors gave a free concert in the US Air Force Band guest artist series. The concert was a surprisingly moving combination of patriotic songs and a Disney medley, followed by the Three Mo' Tenors' trademark mix of opera, jazz, gospel, pop, Broadway, and whatever else comes to mind. Then we walked to the Kennedy Center, where the Four Tops gave a free concert to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the Center's daily free performances on the Millennium Stage. Now, name another city where you can beat that day.

Mark Richards reports below on the two shows that John McLaughlin did this weekend that had Washington as their topic. What was most interesting to me was the response of Tom Davis on McLaughlin One-on-One. For years, a Democratic Congress acted as an enabler of our city's misgovernment and refused to do any serious oversight of Marion Barry's and Sharon Pratt Kelly's administrations. Congress simply financed and underwrote waste, mismanagement, and corruption. Now, a Republican Congress and a friendly Republican White House shrink from any serious oversight of Tony Williams's administration. But Davis, confronted by McLaughlin's criticisms of the city's recent record, presented a very tempered and modest defense of the Williams administration. “In fairness to him,” Davis said, “this is a very, very difficult long-term problem.” And when McLaughlin responded, “But he's had — this is his fifth year in office,” Davis said, “Yeah. And it is his fifth year, and there's a long way to go.” And miles to go before I sleep.

And now, a propos of nothing else, genes. The New Scientist reported it Friday (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993451): “Fifty years to the day from the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of its co-discoverers has caused a storm by suggesting that stupidity is a genetic disease that should be cured. On 28 February 1953 biologists James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA — the chemical code for all life. The breakthrough revealed how genetic information is passed from one generation to the next and revolutionised biology and medicine. But in a documentary series to be screened in the UK on Channel 4, Watson says that low intelligence is an inherited disorder and that molecular biologists have a duty to devise gene therapies or screening tests to tackle stupidity. 'If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease,' says Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York. 'The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, “Well, poverty, things like that.” It probably isn't. So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent.' Watson, no stranger to controversy, also suggests that genes influencing beauty could also be engineered. 'People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great.'”

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Real Property Tax Assessments
Dave De Seve, ddeseve@bellatlantic.net

Those of you that were shocked by your assessments last year better take a seat. I just checked my assessment on line for FY2004 and found that the city has increased mine an additional $200,000 over last year's $200,000 increase, for a whopping $400,000 in just two years. If you want to start working on your appeal, you can check your assessment online at http://www.taxpayerservicecenter.com/RP_Search.jsp?search_type=Assessment.

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Property Tax Assessment
Rae Kelley, rkelley@asprs.org

Have a seat and a drink before you open your property tax assessment notices.

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Ahold and Its Effect on DC Residents
Warren Gorlick, wgorlick@yahoo.com

DC residents who shop at Giant may want to pay attention to the recent failure of Ahold, the Dutch corporate parent of Giant Foods. I'm afraid we now know the real reason behind the failure of Giant to undertake their Wisconsin Avenue store expansion, even after the zoning issues were resolved. While a Giant spokesman was recently quoted that the chain would begin the expansion of its Wisconsin Avenue store in late summer or early fall, I now have a strong suspicion that even that late start date will come and pass. I hope I am proved wrong about that.

This week's financial press is full of speculation as to who will buy Ahold's US assets, including Giant. One potential buyer mentioned is Walmart, but given that Giant is unionized, and also given the small size of a typical Giant store, that seems unlikely. The other potential buyer mentioned in the business press is Safeway. If that were to happen, look for Safeway to close many of the smaller Giant stores, particularly the smaller stores and those that are near existing Safeway supermarkets. (Who knows, perhaps the owner of the independent Brookville supermarket can be convinced to buy some of the smaller Giant stores and turn them into independents as well.)

Until this week, when Ahold made a bombshell announcement and fired its top officers, the Washington press missed this story completely. Contrast this to the dozens of articles that ran in the Post and elsewhere a few years back when Ahold first bought Giant, all saying essentially the same thing about how Ahold would refurbish the stores, bring prepared food sections into Giant supermarkets, etc. Never happened, as anyone who shops at DC Giant stores knows all too well. There had been indications for some time that Ahold was in big trouble, but no mention was made in the Post or elsewhere of the possible ramifications of this failure on Giant, the once great family-owned supermarket chain.

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Only Thirty Six Percent of Sports Commission Employees Live in DC
Debby Hanrahan, debosly@aol.com

Figures provided by the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission show that the percentage of city residents employed by the commission has declined slightly in current fiscal year 2003. This decline occurred despite the commission’s promise last year to the DC Council’s Economic Development Committee to strive to bring more DC residents on board. For fiscal year 2002, DC residents made up 28 of the commission’s 76 employees (36.8 percent). For fiscal year 2003, with the commission cutting back on its overall number of employees, the figures are 21 DC residents of 58 total employees (36.2 percent).

DC residents’ percentage of the commission’s payroll declined from 33 percent in fiscal year 2002 to 30 percent (of $2.22 million) in fiscal year 2003. Seven new employees were hired in the most recent calendar year (2002) — four from Maryland and three from DC As with all other suburbanites employed in DC — even those employed by the DC government -- the commission’s employees from Maryland and Virginia pay no DC income tax. This means that $1.56 million of the commission’s $2.22 million payroll for 2003 is immune from DC taxes (including the $275,000 salary of Executive Director and President Bobby Goldwater, a Marylander).

This lack of city residents on the commission’s payroll is especially upsetting at a time of concern over jobless rates and an inadequate tax base, and is further evidence of the need for the District to have authority to levy an income tax on suburban workers employed in the District. While the commission members themselves live in DC and are uncompensated, it is especially galling that most of the same folks who implement their policies (for the neighborhood-disrupting Grand Prix races, for having the city’s taxpayers subsidize construction of a baseball stadium to the tune of $300 million for millionaire investors, for spending untold millions to bring the summer Olympics here) don’t live in DC and don’t pay any taxes here.

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Neighborhood Action: The Plan, and the Reality
Nick Keenan, Shaw, nbk@gsionline.com

If you go to the Neighborhood Action web site at http://www.neighborhoodaction.dc.gov, you can see the Strategic Neighborhood Action Plan for your neighborhood. One of the key components of all of these plans is that eight fire inspectors will be hired; in my neighborhood plan this fact is mentioned three times. This is an important step, because the Fire Department is the city agency most responsible for inspecting and closing unsafe buildings. Most complaints about dangerous buildings are sent to DCRA, but I've been told by insiders that DCRA lacks the authority to close buildings in most cases, and that the Fire Department is the real place to go.

Unfortunately, it is currently virtually impossible to get a Fire Department inspection, because these inspectors don't really exist. In Wednesday's Washington Times there is a story (http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20030226-93322084.htm) about how Fire Department inspectors had been assigned to engines in a cost-cutting move, and now are returning to inspections, but only to do nightclubs, presumably in the wake of last week's two tragedies. Once the heat dies down I imagine they'll be back on the trucks.

I tire of the endless Williams-bashing that goes on in this forum and elsewhere, but I will concede that this is pretty typical of plans to address neighborhood quality-of-life issues. We have bold plans, often imaginative and perceptive, but the resources that are devoted range from patently inadequate to nonexistent. You see it in Neighborhood Service Coordinators with no services to coordinate, and Patrol Service Areas with not enough officers to patrol. Maybe what we need is less planning and more doing.

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My District, ’Tis of Thee
Mark David Richards, Dupont East, mark@bisconti.com

This song was published on voting day, November 8, 1932, in The Washington Star. The day was called “A Day of Humiliation and Mourning for the Un-Americanized Americans of the District,” and “A Day of National Enthusiasm and Patriotic Pride for the Other Americans.”

My District, 'Tis of Thee, by Frederic William Wile. Sung to the tune of “America.”

My District, 'tis of thee,
Land without liberty,
Of thee I sing.

Where Nation's laws are made,
Where income tax is paid,
Yet, when all's done and said,
Freedom can't ring.

Land of the Congress folk,
Citizenship is a joke,
At it we fling.

We scorn our shackled right,
We mean some day to fight,
With all our main and might,
And suffrage bring.

Why should the District be
Black sheep in land of free,
Her spirit galled?

We send our sons to die,
Heed the republic's cry,
With all patriots vie,
Whene'er we're called.

Nation, at large, to you
We raise our cry and hue:
Hear our fair plea.

Tax without voice or vote
Sounds a discordant note,
See rank injustice smote,
End Tyranny!

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The District on McLaughlin This Weekend
Mark David Richards, Dupont East, mark@bisconti.com

This weekend, John McLaughlin, joined by Tony Blankley, Patrick Buchanan, Eleanor Cliff, and Mortimer Zuckerman, posed a provocative question on The McLaughlin Group, http://www.mclaughlin.com/. He asked, “In light of Washington's grave mismanagement . . . is it time to eliminate Home Rule, or at least suspend it?” He called DC “the District of Calamity.” Pat Buchanan said that DC should never have been given Home Rule, but now the federal government can't take it back — it's too late. McLaughlin was furious about the performance of snow removal, especially since DC is the number one terrorist target and DC was in a code orange alert. He highlighted the mayor's vacation to Puerto Rico. He mocked Delegate Norton's call to involve FEMA. He talked about DC's $6 billion budget and mismanagement and corruption. And he highlighted DC's high crime rate (now number seven in the nation). One member of the show joked that McLaughlin must not have had the snow removed on his street for days, hinting at a bee in his bonnet.

McLaughlin cited sections of Colbert King's article on February 15, “Porgy, Bess and the PTA,” multiple times, including the following quote: “Even with Marion Barry off the scene, the District, under Tony Williams, remains an insiders' game in which things move and shake according to the dictates of a nest of operators with interlocking relationships. To appreciate the District in 2003, it's also helpful to understand that the official city hall attitude toward potential conflicts of interest and the misuse of authority is, at best, cavalier. The whole stinking mess cries out for cleansing by an army of civic reformers who can no longer stomach the grade-B characters with big titles who have wrapped their tentacles around the District's governmental, civic and political institutions. It's time to take back our city.” McLaughlin noted that Tom Davis wants to give more control to DC, and asked, “Is Congress overly permissive with DC?” Tony Blankley thought McLaughlin was unfair on snow removal. Eleanor Cliff said she lives in DC and her area was promptly plowed. Lawrence O'Donnell said DC is a southern city, so it has trouble handling snow. He said Williams is the best mayor the city has had, but added, “That is an easy title to win.” Another person said the best mayor was Walter Washington.

On McLaughlin's other show, McLaughlin One on One, he interviewed Rep. Tom Davis and Dorothy Brizill. He talked about a $128 million DC deficit. Rep. Davis said DC and the federal government need a pronounced partnership — this is the federal city and the nation's capital — and we need to tighten up. Rep. Davis said, “. . . it's a tough city to manage,” but that there is still work to do. He said the city was in far better shape now than five to six years ago, but he noted that the mayor hasn't achieved reform at the second, third, and fourth tiers of the DC government bureaucracy, where there are Barry holdovers. Rep. Davis said the city needs to grow its tax base. He said the federal government recently added a regional person for Homeland Security but added, “We're not ready for prime time yet.” When asked, he said he would stay out of the baseball stadium issue, and mentioned that his jurisdiction is also competing for a baseball team. “Congress would be inclined to let the city decide what they want to do though its voters,” he said. “If the city wants to spend its money that way in revenue bonds, they can do it.” Dorothy Brizill highlighted government mismanagement and incompetence issues that are frequently raised by writers to themail. She said the federal government has been a good partner and has given DC money for security, but wondered what the city has done with it. She said that 911 does not work, and although DC has more police officers per capita, residents cannot find the police officers in their PSAs. Brizill said that Mayor Williams was supposed to be the reform mayor, to make the trains run on time, but that he has been an horrific — a terrible — manager, even more so than Marion Barry. Brizill said the problem is not just the Barry holdovers, since the mayor had searched for and brought in his own people. “He has not been the reformer people thought,” she said. There was much more, but this is a taste of the discussion I watched.

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Internet Street Musician
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com

A couple years ago I did a stint as a street musician at Dupont Circle. It was way fun, but even with a portable amplifier I couldn't compete against traffic noise. These days I prefer being an Internet street musician, where traffic noise is nonexistent. An added benefit of being an Internet street musician is that I can share music with family and friends in other states and countries. For those who might be interested, some recent songs I put up on the web are at http://makeashorterlink.com/?T29821E73. These songs can be heard using the free version of the RealPlayer software, downloadable from http://www.real.com. Here are a couple of interesting question to think about: What happens in a community when community members hear each other sing? If you moved to a new town and knew no one, how would it make you feel to hear five or ten of your neighbors singing on your first night in town? Is it true, as Noel Paul Stookey (from Peter, Paul and Mary) claims, that people can't lie when they're singing?

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Rusty but Musty Attack on Rent Control
David Conn, sellersconn@erols.com

S.E. Reuter continues the rusty but musty attack on the city's rent stabilization program in the February 23 edition of themail. Reuter calls rent control “legislative socialism,” like a typical free market economist, and blames the program for the lack of maintenance in the city's housing stock. Like most critics, Reuter ignores the factual features of the DC rent stabilization program that makes it attractive to a landlord. First, Reuter ignores that all new construction after 1975 is exempt from any price controls whatsoever. Second, Reuter ignores the fact that small apartment units, where an owner owns four or fewer rental units in the city, are also exempt from rent control, and from any price controls whatsoever. Third, for the older housing stock under rent stabilization, Reuter ignores the fact that landlords have a guaranteed twelve percent rate of return on the assessed value of the housing stock (which often exceeds the investment value) minus any encumbrance, such as a mortgage. If the landlord falls below the twelve percent rate of return, the landlord files a hardship petition and can gain a rent increase to make the twelve percent rate of return, a very high level of return, a floor, but never a ceiling on earnings. Fourth, Reuter ignores that rent ceilings can be raised up to twenty percent for so-called capital improvements. Fifth, Reuter ignores the market realities in Washington, DC, failing to recognize that eighty percent of the apartment units under rent control have higher legal rent ceilings than the landlords can charge. Sixth, Reuter ignores the fact that the Supreme Court, with current Chief Justice Rehnquist, hardly a “legislative socialist,” writing the majority opinion, dismissed a constitutional challenge to rent control in 1988 in the case of Pennell v. City of San Jose. The facts, Mr./Ms. Reuter, demonstrate that the rent stabilization program in the city, really a very modest program, does not limit earnings of most landlords. Therefore, the failure to maintain the buildings and proliferation of “hot” or “distressed” properties results from the greed of certain landlords, and not “legislative socialism.”

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Lowering Expectations
Jackie Boden, jboden2003@yahoo.fr

I fully agree that there is a movement to get the citizens to expect less so that city government can deliver poorer services without elected officials being held responsible. The upside is that officials have at last stopped blaming Marion Barry for everything. The downside is that they now have a new scapegoat: the taxpayers! The recent E-mail sent to the Adams Morgan Yahoo Group by a city official, Jose Sueiro, blaming citizens for the problems with the MPD, is an example of the problem. Sueiro, I am told, makes $90,000 a year and seems to be very good at passing the blame and not doing anything. Adams Morgan Commissioner Alan Roth has had similar experience with Sueiro’s buck passing and arrogance. Unfortunately, Sueiro is far from alone in having “attitude”; he merely mirrors his superiors.

We exist in an Orwellian world where a person who points out what is wrong and what can be done to make things better is called “negative.” The “positive” people charging others with being “negative” most often have as their mantra: “that is how things are, you cannot do anything about it.” So instead of demanding and expecting responsibility and accountability the standard is set at the lowest common denominator. We see this not only in government but also throughout society. This passive aggressive behavior, coupled with victimization and cheap imitations of Rush Limbaugh, are destroying us. Perhaps the late Fred Rogers put it best when he said that his mission was to make people treat their neighbors like they wish to be treated. Until this view of life returns, ours will continue to be a troubled and deteriorating society.

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Re: Let’s Run the Numbers
Richard Stone Rothblum, rothblum@verizon.net

Gary Imhoff's analysis of the plowing problem neglected the issue of getting the plows to the streets to be plowed. A better model would be to assume that all the plows start off in one spot. Assume that each plow has to follow a plowed street to get to its assigned street to be plowed. Then, it is a much more complicated problem. The first street to be plowed will have 379 snowplows traveling in a train. (Is this what was observed on Massachusetts Avenue?) So, the clearing of roads is more analogous to growth of bacteria in a culture medium. It starts slowly, and gradually expands until the food supply is exhausted and then dies down. To further complicate the model, there will be interference between plows, streets blocked by stalled and stuck cars, and lots of backtracking and maneuvering. The plows have to return to home base for additional salt and fuel. This doesn't take into account human factors at all. It also doesn't account for a non-optimal strategy of plowing, and the fact that whatever plan is used will not be followed exactly. (It also doesn't allow for time wasted dealing with jerks trying to protect their parking places.) I am not sure that your model is at all a useful way to look at things. According to your analysis, if DC had 4,400 snow plows, all the streets could be plowed in 7.5 minutes at your slowest assumed rate of plowing (2 mph). A gigantic snowplow traffic jam would be closer to reality, and the performance would be worse than if you had a smaller number of plows.

[Starting all plows at one central point would indeed be a bad plan. The fact remains that DC now has 379 city owned and contract plows available to plow 1100 street miles, which translates into a little less than three street miles per plow. The city can no longer argue that its poor performance results from a lack of resources or manpower, and it cannot seriously maintain that with this level of resources it should take up to sixty hours after a snowstorm has ended before plows get to all neighborhood streets. The only remaining explanations for not clearing all the streets rapidly are poor planning or poor management and supervision. — Gary Imhoff]

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Snow Removal
Ralph Blessing, rblessin88@hotmail.com

My main gripe about the snow removal is that the city stopped before finishing the job. Just because auto traffic is passable doesn't mean that DPW can put its plows away. Most downtown intersections still have piles of frozen gunk blocking crosswalks, thereby forcing pedestrians to risk life and limb to get from one side of the street to the other? Ditto the parking lanes. Why has none of this accumulated mess been removed? They could have at least used a back hoe to make pedestrian cuts where needed. Or is DPW waiting until the last of the season's snow has fallen so they don't have to make more than one pass?

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Snow Handling Ability
Ed T. Barron, edtb@aol.com

Out here at Copper Mountain about two hours west of Denver, they really know how to handle sudden and heavy snowfalls. They have the slopes to take care of and also large parking lots. There must have been five thousand cars in the lot this Sunday, yet they all had a place to park despite some six inches of snow late last evening. As for the main interstate road leading out from Denver, they keep that clear twenty-four hours a day from shoulder to shoulder. Except for a few foolhardy SUV owners, who think that the laws of physics have been repealed in their favor, most driver have no problems negotiating the less than perfect driving conditions.

Should be coming back to Spring-like weather when we have worn ourselves out on the slopes out here.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

What Shouldn’t Be Built on the Old Convention Center Site, March 4
Alexander Padro, padroanc2@aol.com

On Tuesday, March 4, beginning at 6:00 p.m. at the current Washington Convention Center, 900 9th Street, NW, teams of developers wishing to be selected to redevelop the convention center site will make public presentations and answer questions from the public about their qualifications and visions for the site. This will be the only opportunity for the public to participate in the selection process before a recommendation is forwarded to the Council for approval. This event might seem like a perfunctory series of presentations by developers that shouldn't be of much interest to the average Washingtonian. But because this parcel is the most sought-after piece of real estate currently available on the east coast, the stakes are high, both for the developers and District residents. Many will recall that a number of elements have been proposed for the mixed use development at the site, including housing, commercial offices, retail, open space, a music museum, and potentially, a new central public library to replace the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, located a block away at 9th and G Streets, NW.

Readers of themail and the Post will recall the recent controversy over whether the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library should be renovated or replaced. Links to Post articles: my January 20, 2003 Close to Home piece, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6350-2003Jan17.html; Marie Harris Aldridge's response, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38440-2003Feb6.html; last Monday's article, http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55212-2003Feb23.html; and letters to the editor, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5675-2003Feb13.html.

It is my opinion, as a member of the DC Public Library's board of trustees, that our city has no business trying to spend $150 million on a new central library when we've had to cut a day out of the hours of operation of all our neighborhood branches to respond to a seven percent budget cut, and now face up to an additional ten percent cut in our budget for the current year, as well as a ten percent decrease in our budget for the next fiscal year. We'll have to cut hours again, or possibly permanently close some branches, in order to address these cuts. Does it make any sense to spend twice as much for a new library than to completely renovate the one we have, under these circumstances? It doesn't, except for the visions of dollar signs that are dancing in the mayor's, Eric Price's, and Andrew Altman's heads, thinking about a DOES Building/Newseum-style deal for the real estate under the MLK Library. Whether or not you agree that our central library should be renovated instead of replaced, public participation in the presentations on Tuesday night will be important. One of the developer teams will be reshaping several square blocks of downtown Washington, presumably reaping a huge profit in the process. The city stands to gain a substantial sum and future income from the convention center redevelopment deal. It would be desirable to hear what the public thinks should go on the site, and what they believe shouldn't.

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Norton Town Meeting, March 4
Karen Szulgit, kaszulgit@ilsr.org

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton will hold an “Urgent Town Meeting to Decide Next Steps on Voting Rights” on Tuesday, March 4, 6:30-8:30 p.m., at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, 9th and G Streets, NW (Metro: Gallery Place/Metro Center) . All those who support full democratic rights for DC should attend this meeting and make their voices heard!

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Fair Budget Coalition Conference, March 7
Parisa Norouzi, dcparisa@aol.com

The Fair Budget Coalition of DC invites you to attend a conference entitled, “From Service to Justice: Realizing a Vision for a Just, Inclusive, and Caring DC.” The conference will take place Friday, March 7th from 9 to 5 at All Souls Church at 1500 Harvard Street, NW. In this era of budget shortfalls and an increasingly frayed social safety net, simply doing direct service is not enough. Join service providers, community leaders, advocates, labor, artists, and others in exploring ways to work for structural change as well as preserve essential services. Our ultimate goal is to transform DC into a more just city, one that puts human needs first.

The cost is $10 for individuals, $5 for Fair Budget Coalition members; $30 for organizations (up to three staff people), $15 for coalition members. Additional staff members may be added at the individual rate. No one will be turned away due to their inability to pay. To register contact Julia Gordon at 906-8025, or E-mail jgordon@clasp.org.

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International Women’s Day Celebration, March 8
Lia Hutton, lhutton@amideast.org

On Saturday, March 8, Amnesty International USA will hold an International Women's Day Celebration. Speakers will include Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and Elena Schitova, director of The Women's Alliance, based in Russia, as well as Sheila Dauer, director of the AI USA Women's Human Rights Program. The Bread and Roses a cappella group will perform and the work of local artists will be featured in a silent auction. Light refreshments will be available. The event will be held at the Radisson Barcelo Hotel, 2121 P St. NW from 6:30-9 p.m. For more information, please contact Alison Kozma; 544-0200, extension 307 or E-mail akozma@aiusa.org.

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CLASSIFIEDS — RECOMMENDATIONS

Auto Club
Beth Daley, beth_daley@yahoo.com

Someone asked about alternatives to AAA in the last issue. I too have decided to let my AAA membership lapse because of their pro-sprawl, pro-road, anti-environmental lobbying. Here's an alternative roadside assistance club founded by the founder of Working Assets long distance -- http://www.betterworldclub.com/.

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Auto Clubs
John Whiteside, johnwhiteside at earthlink dot net

I asked for recommendations on an auto club that would provide the towing/jump start kind of services that AAA does, but without lobbying against clean air and smart development the way AAA does (& goes to some lengths to conceal from its members). Thanks to everyone who responded. I got a bunch of recommendations for auto clubs that are more responsible and/or better deals that AAA so I am sharing them with everybody.

Better World Club (http://www.betterworldclub.com) is the one I'm going with. They are an environmentally friendly organization that offers the same services without the lobbying. And you can get coverage for your bicycle as well as your car. Many insurance companies offer these services; check with yours. Some gas companies offer clubs too. One person recommended Amoco's, which is now BP (British Petroleum, or Beyond Petroleum if you believe the marketing. Check their web sites. Personally I think this one has the same political problem as AAA, but they may be a better deal than AAA. AARP has an auto club, so if you are eligible to belong to them, you can check it out.

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