We Are Not Amused

Dear Amusing People:

Going through the slots petition sheets simply as paper evidence, the fraud is so blatant and transparent that it can be funny. A single circulator claims to have gathered six hundred signatures in one day — an average of one every minute in a ten-hour day, with no breaks. Anyone who has ever gathered petition signatures smiles at that one; it’s better than running the one-minute mile. A circulator credited with a dozen petition sheets signs them in four different handwritings. A circulator is listed at two different addresses on sheets signed on the same day. On dozens of petitions, the original circulators’ names and address have simply been crossed out, and different names and address have been substituted.

The forgeries on the mayor’s primary petition sheets two years ago, more than eight thousand bad signatures among the ten thousand submitted, were then the biggest election fraud in DC history, but the slots people have beat the mayor’s record. The mayor’s forgeries were primarily done by just three people, but the gambling promoters imported petition circulators from around the nation to defraud us.

But then you go beyond the paper, and meet the people involved, and the laughs ring a little hollow. The man whose signature was forged as a signer of a petition and who now feels that he has been the victim of identity theft just as much as if his credit card had been compromised. The severely mentally retarded man who thought he was doing a good thing when he signed over fifty petitions as a circulator, and who was proud that he earned a dollar a sheet for signing them, but who is left with a potential legal charge of perjury for signing a false affidavit, while the out-of-town companies that scammed him into signing have left town with their profits. The homeless people who were recruited by those out-of-town companies and told that it was legal to sign petitions as "witnesses" when they hadn’t really circulated the sheets themselves, who were variously paid only a part of the money they had been promised or cheated out of the money entirely, and who are now left with their own legal problems. Very funny.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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The Theft of Democracy
Larry Seftor, larry underscore seftor .the757 at zoemail.net

As citizens of the District of Columbia we have precious little democracy. Therefore the actions of those promoting slot machines for DC are particularly egregious. Frankly, I don't care much one way or the other about the slot machine initiative, but I do care about insiders and outsiders subverting the legal procedures in DC. Angelo Paparella, president of the company hired to manage the petition campaign, said that the election board should ignore the "circulator problems" that represent violations of DC law. As DC citizens that is our law, and Mr. Paparella has no standing to call for its neutralization to suit his business goals. Additionally, that law has teeth. Circulators who lie could be sentenced to a $10,000 fine and a year in jail. Mr. Paparella, his company, and senior members of his campaign knew what they were doing and they should be pursued and punished. Their crime is not one of promoting slots. Their crime is no less than eroding our ability to govern ourselves.

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Desperate Mayor to Major League Baseball
Ed Delaney, profeddeal@yahoo.com

Desperate mayor to MLB: “If you need anything, call us!” From the Post’s Metro update section on July 14 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50506-2004Jul14_2.html): “DC Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said yesterday that he met with Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig during All-Star Game festivities this week in Houston, adding that he hopes baseball officials ‘make the right decision and bring baseball here.’ Williams said he and other D.C. officials made the rounds in Houston but got little sense of the owners' intentions. ‘We told them, “If you need anything, call us,”' Williams said at his weekly news conference. ‘We're proud of the bid we put in.’” Of course, he’s not proud enough of it to give anyone but MLB the details on it. Yes, you read it right: “We told them, 'If you need anything, call us.'” I remember my mom saying that to me before leaving me at camp. This of course follows similarly adoring comments from Williams to MLB like: “We're just saying to baseball, 'Please bring a team,'” and "Whoever owns the team, is up to MLB — the man behind the door." Pardon me if I keep expressing my incredulity at this open-pocketed, heart-on-sleeve approach to a private business concern, but this goes beyond the pale. It's straight from that scene in When Harry Met Sally where a desperate Billy Crystal is singing “Call Me” into Meg Ryan's answering machine: “If you're feeling sad and lonely, there's a service I can render. Tell the one who loves you only, I can be so warm and tender. Call me; Don't be afraid, you can call me.”

I personally don't want someone who is this desperate for a team, to the point of virtually begging for one like a lovesick teenager, bargaining behind closed doors with MLB, especially since such meetings have yielded the baseball brigade proposing (on bended knee?) to love, honor, and obey MLB's demand for 100 percent public financing! I mean, at least play hard to get, because DC is the hottest thing available to MLB; every other market is either married (has a team) or looks cheap by comparison! We've got to act as the responsible parents if the baseball brigade is just going to give itself away like this! If all else fails, we can point MLB in the direction of DC's country cousin who's also pining for MLB's attention.

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Regarding Sheridan Terrace
John H. Johnson, realtor.john@earthlink.net

[Re: LaTanya Wright, themail, July 14] A training center by a major business in SE DC sounds like a great opportunity for career oriented employment. Maybe the fight should be to demand young adults east of the river and former residents of Sheridan have a share of the jobs associated with building the project and certainly a percentage of the training opportunities.

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Sex and Civil Service
Lawrence M. Miller, lawrence.miller@starpower.net

L.E. Adams [themail, July 4] misses the point in suggesting that the placement by a government official of his mistress in a job for which she is qualified would not be newsworthy and would be okay. The allegations about Councilmember Brazil have proven newsworthy as judged by the local media, and he should be called upon to respond.

It is certainly true that officials often sponsor a particular candidate for an opening. Whatever the civil service rules say, it would be naive to think that friendships and political affiliation would never enter the picture. But even if you were to concede that it is acceptable or inevitable that some matters other than merit will be part of the hiring process, you have to draw the line here. I seriously doubt that an official would weigh the public interest in the balance at all in supporting a lover for a job. The supervisor of such an employee hired at the instance of a highly placed official would have a hard time disciplining such a worker if he or she turned out not to perform well (in the job). Coworkers would automatically suspect favoritism in assignments. The problem is not what relationships an official pursues in his or her private life, but the importation of a sexual relationship into the employment process.

And how do you determine that the paramour placed in a government position is in fact qualified? It was a long time ago, but I still remember Elizabeth “I can't type, I can't file, I can't even answer the phone” Ray.

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Developing Affordable Housing for Unaffordable Households
Len Sullivan, lsnarpac@bellatlantic.net

A new Housing Task Force has been formed and given one year to come to grips with DC's affordable housing gap as well as the mayor's desire to pack the city with 100,000 more residents. The well-respected Urban Institute has come up with its clearly presented framework for the task force's deliberations. (see http://www.narpac.org/PWAH.HTM#summary). Skeptics like NARPAC, however, can use the same report to demonstrate the impracticality of their proposed actions, particularly if the costs of their far-reaching suggestions, and the relative inability of DC to pay for them, are considered. Surely subsidized housing and improving the lot of the less fortunate are region-wide problems requiring regional resources. How can DC, with only two revenue-producing households per revenue-consuming household, match its neighboring suburbs with an “affordability ratio” of 10:1? (see http://www.narpac.org/PWAH.HTM#regdisho). Where is it written that our nation's capital city should be the region's poorhouse? Where is the root strategy for developing an exemplary, prosperous core city for the national capital metro area?

For that matter, why should some of DC's most desirable residential property be saddled with hosting a lame federal agency in an outmoded women's seminary generating only two percent of its potential revenues (see http://www.narpac.org/REXBRAC.HTM#nsstohom)? Why should DC's biggest 'edge city' use its scarce acreage more than twenty times more efficiently than DC for both housing and commercial benefit, and why should Long Beach, CA, have better housing distribution than DC (see http://www.narpac.org/NCI.HTM#dcvlongb)? Check out these contentious additions to the July update of NARPAC's web site at http://www.narpac.org/INTHOM.HTM. You too should think about the special demands of being part of our national capital city.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

Something Novel Book Club, July 22
Debra Truhart, debra.truhart@dc.gov

Thursday, July 22, 1:30 p.m. Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW, Room 221. Something Novel Book Club. The Last Girls by Lee Smith will be discussed. Public contact: 727-1295.

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Sisterspace and Books Events, July 28, 31
Vanessa Lopes, vdlopes22@yahoo.com

Celebrate and support Sisterspace and Books, the independent bookstore for women of the African diaspora in the nation’s capital! To keep this cultural center on U Street, now’s the time is now to raise the issues and raise the funds. Come in to Sisterspace on July 28 at 6:30 p.m. for a book signing and discussion with Dr. Mindy Fullilove, author of Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It. The author is an African-American woman psychiatrist based at Columbia University.

Come over July 31 to the to the Lincoln Theater to honor Sisterspace, along with authors, musicians, spoken word artists, public officials, and much more! There will be speakers from community, as well as Patrice Gaines, Ysei Barnwell, Betrice Berry, spoken word artists, and more. For more information, contact Sisterspace, 332-3433, sistersp@covad.net or go to the web site, http://www.sisterspace.com, where you will soon be able to purchase admission to the July 31 celebration/fundraiser.

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Child Policy Forum, August 10
Susie Cambria, scambria@dckids.org

Prioritizing for Our City’s Future, a policy forum sponsored by DC Action for Children, has a new date: August 10, 8:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m. Come and meet with key city policy makers. Hear about their vision for our children’s future and well-being in the District of Columbia. Present questions, engage in discussion, and make recommendations for improvements and strategies that will enhance the health and well-being for all of the District’s children, now and in the future. Panelists are Neil Albert, Deputy Mayor for Children, Youth, Families, and Elders; Robert Bobb, City Administrator and Deputy Mayor (invited); Sandy C. Allen, Ward 8 Council Member; and Angela M. Jones, Executive Director, DC Action for Children.

Registration begins at 8:00 a.m. A continental breakfast will be served. The forum will start promptly at 8:45 a.m. The forum will be held at the World Bank, Building J, 701 18th Street, NW, Conference Room JB1-080. Signs will be posted. For security purposes all attendees should brings a valid photo ID to help expedite security clearance. Reservations are required. Please send your name, organization, address, city, state, zip, phone, fax, and E-mail address to DC ACT by fax to 234-9108 or E-mail to kbell@dckids.org. The RSVP deadline is August 5. For more information or to register by telephone, contact Kim L.E. Bell at 234-9404.

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CLASSIFIEDS — RECOMMENDATIONS

Honda Mechanic Recommendation?
Wendy Stengel. wendywoowho@yahoo.com 

My 2001 Honda Civic is now past warrantee, and I'm looking for a good, honest, reliable, trusted mechanic for my car. Anyone have recommendations? I live in Glover Park, but for the right mechanic, will travel afield.

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