Debates

Dear Debaters:

At the end of Friday’s edition of the DC Politics Hour on WAMU-FM, host Kojo Nnamdi discussed the debate that has been going on in themail about the National Capitol Medical Center (not yet available online, but when it is posted it will be at http://www.wamu.org/programs/kn/06/02/10.php). Kojo commented, in what is for him a very rare sharp barb, that the attacks on critics of the NCMC seem to come from people who “must have flunked reading comprehension.” Indeed, I continue to get messages from people who completely misrepresent what the critics have written, and who base personal attacks on those misrepresentations. I printed a few of those early attacks to let everyone know the nature of the debate, but I don’t feel compelled to continue to print them. Messages that consist of nothing but personal attacks will be ignored; messages that mix personal attacks with factual arguments will have the personal attacks edited out; and constructive arguments on both sides of the debate will be welcomed.

Ward 3 council candidates and supporters of candidates have asked why themail prints so many contributions by candidate Jonathan Rees. The answer is simple: because he sends them. If other candidates want to publicize their positions in themail, they are free to do so. Actually, I print only a small percentage of the messages that Rees sends, and I can’t promise to print anything and everything that every candidate sends. I don’t want, and I don’t think any of us wants, to turn themail into merely an outlet for political press releases. But it’s hard for candidates in DC, particularly nonincumbents, to get any coverage by local newspapers and radio and television stations, and if candidates have something to say about the issues that confront us, themail is available to them.

In the February 2 issue of themail, I wrote about Mark Segraves’ story on WTOP, about the Department of Public Works’ overcharging other city agencies for the work that it does for them. There is a footnote to that story, sent to me by a longtime city employee who wants to remain anonymous. Since themail doesn’t accept anonymous contributions, I’ll just pass on his comments. He says that city agencies know about DPW very well, and send work to it only as a last resort. "Overcharging by DPW has been going on for decades. Agency directors and administrators would rather have anyone but DPW do the work because of the price, quality of workmanship, and timeliness of completion. The decision to have DPW do work for other agencies is usually because of an imminent situation that would not get done because of procurement requirements and to create the appearance that something is being done immediately. Therefore, call DPW and close your eyes and hope for the best. Additionally, under previous administrations, numerous projects were assigned to DPW without any input by agency directors, who privately disagreed with the decisions."

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Dude, Where’s My Library?
Deborah Akel, dakel@earthlink.net

As a thirteen-year resident of the West End, I’m concerned about the proposed redevelopment of DC’s libraries, especially my beloved West End branch. The three-hundred-page Draft Technical Report of the Mayor’s task force, which is harder to come by than a ticket to the Superbowl, raises some red flags for me, selling “air rights,” “mixed-use commercial development combination,” and “zoning/major neighborhood development,” to name a few. Any reference to these controversial proposals was omitted from the Executive Summary, the version of the report in wide circulation. Also omitted, in the report itself, are the minutes of meetings where air rights sales and development were discussed, even though minutes of other meetings on other topics are included.

This week, I attended the Library Trustees meeting at the West End branch. The room was near capacity, and almost everyone spoke in opposition to redevelopment. Kathy Patterson sat with the Board, who reassured us that they would take public comment into consideration before going ahead with plans. However, I left feeling that their plans are already underway, like a runaway train, and will be realized unless there is a significant public outcry.

What can we look forward to? Libraries nestled inside high-rise, block-swallowing mixed-use projects, with Starbucks, CVS, movie theaters, retail, and stacks of luxury condos that only the wealthy can afford. The library will be an afterthought — an amenity from private developers who stand to profit richly under this scheme. Especially in my West End neighborhood, where a developer was recently quoted as saying he was “salivating” over the possibility of developing Square 37, on which the library sits. Furthermore, could this be the slippery slope toward privatization?

I encourage everyone who cares about our libraries to attend a “listening session,” though I’m not sure how much listening is really going on. You can get the updated schedule at http://www.dclibrary.org/.

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This Old House in Shaw
Ed T. Barron, edtb@aoldotcom

The first in a several week series of television broadcasts began Saturday with the This Old House crew inspecting an abandoned and burned-out house in Shaw. This house is scheduled for a restoration and rebuild by the TOH crew. Their initial evaluation is that this will be the most challenging project they have ever undertaken. They also commented that it was really a “tear down.” The budget for restoration is only $200K by the Mi Casa owners, who bought it from the city for one dollar. TOH will donate materials and guidance and the use of their talented crew. The house will be sold to a moderate income family when completed. Episodes will be shown on PBS Channel 26 on Saturday mornings beginning at 9 a.m.

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Play Ball: Not So Fast
Greg DuRoss, washgreg@verizon.net

So it only took two days to reveal the lie behind the estimated cost of the stadium. If the estimated costs were truthful, there would be no basis for Major League Baseball President DuPuy’s comments as quoted in The Washington Post on February 11 [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/10/AR2006021002224.html]. Let’s face it — what he and the multimillionaire baseball owners are most worried about is that if this deal falls through, it will jeopardize the new “gold” standard set by the District of Columbia — a standard that MLB wants to be able to use in extorting new stadiums from other cities that want to keep their baseball teams. Thank God we have at least a few Councilmembers (Fenty, Graham, Mendelson, and Catania) that are fiscally responsible. I have a question for the lawyers that read this message. If MLB takes this to arbitration, isn’t the underlying issue whether the Mayor has unchecked authority to commit the District to a half billion dollar contract, when the law states that the Council must approve a contract of this size? It’s about time we tested this premise in the courts.

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The Stepford Council
Petra Weinakht, pweinakht@konetidy.com

Gary asks [themail, February 8] why no one wrote about the Council’s stadium lease vote. What’s to say? When the Council huddles secretly in dark places to conduct its perverted form of governance? When reportedly intelligent people look at a deal that reeks of social injustice and declare it’s the road to Oz, arriving at the Parousia promised by our cynical mayor (who will disappear from here the second the balloting ends this fall)? When the will of the voters who trusted Brown, Gray, and Barry is eschewed in favor of personal gain? When the megarich get megaricher with our money, thanks to their toadies like Patterson and the others who apparently think we’re too stupid to recognize bad faith when we see it?

It’s time for the next act. Payday comes in November. Let’s make it count. Throw the bums out.

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NCMC: Still Waiting for Answers
Eric Rosenthal, eric.rosenthal@mac.com

Recently, Citizens for the National Capital Medical Center, made up of Williams administration officials, Councilmember Vincent Gray, the Walker Marchant Group public relations firm and others, has said a lot about the proposed hospital. However, there still are major questions: 1) Hospital bed use in Washington declined 28 percent between 1994 and 2004. Roughly 1,700 beds are unused each day because they are not needed. Why do we need a new hospital? 2) A Journal of the American Medical Association study found that 100 percent of Washington residents have timely access to top-level trauma care compared to 62.9 percent of US residents. Why do we need a new trauma center? 3) The American College of Emergency Physicians gave Washington an A+ for emergency care, finding we have the best access in the country. We use emergency rooms at double the US rate, often because we lack the outpatient care that could keep us healthy. Why do we need a new emergency room?

4) The major conditions that plague Washington are substance abuse, asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, HIV and other chronic illnesses. Generally, family doctors and outpatient specialists treat chronic disease most effectively and both are in short supply. Shouldn’t we focus on these shortages since they offer the best opportunities to improve health and extend lives? 5) Hospitals are spread unevenly in the city. But unless there is evidence that causes our terrible health situation, is moving medical facilities less than four miles from Georgia Avenue to the edge of Capitol Hill the best use of several hundred million public health dollars? 6) Should we spend large sums of public funds to open a facility almost entirely for people who have good health insurance, while many DC residents have no health insurance? 7) If the National Capital Medical Center is a good idea, why is there talk of circumventing both the certificate of need review and the Council Health Committee?

Before we proceed with a major health initiative, we must be certain it would improve health. The advocates for the National Capital Medical Center have yet to make that case.

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Debate Proposal: No Moderator Need Apply
Colin B. Touhey, colin2e@dcdebate.com

It seems to me that NCMC debate moderator issue can be resolved in a rather simple fashion ("Why No Debates on NCMC," themail, February 8). We teach our middle and high school students how to have substantive and respectful debates without a moderator. I should think that adults should be able to engage in the same. Here is the proposal. The District of Columbia Urban Debate League will host a public debate on the proposed NCMC, with participants being those who were mentioned in Mr. Myer’s posting. The affirmative side, those in favor of changing the status quo by establishing the NCMC, will present their plan in a set speech time, uninterrupted by the negative side, those who oppose the NCMC. The negative will then directly cross examine the affirmative for a set period. This pattern will then be reversed. The negative will then present its closing followed by the affirmative’s closing (who speak first and last since they carry the burden of proof). If the parties respect the other’s speech time, no moderator is necessary, only a timer. The audience will then be given ballots on which they vote for a side (no ties) and provide a reason for their decisions. We will announce a winner and then publish the rationales from the audience for public review and the edification of the participants. Perhaps this will result in a respectful discussion on the issue. Our children are very successful at this. Any takers?

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National Capital Medical Center
Ken Jarboe, ANC 6B05, kenan.jarboe@verizon.net

I appreciate Ralph Chittams’ attempt to reconcile the sides on the NCMC [themail, February 8]. Unfortunately, I fear that his solution is unworkable. His solution is that NCMC should be built and that Howard University and the District Government should make firm, funded commitments to provide greater access to primary and specialist care east of the river. In a perfect world with unlimited resources, this might work. But our health care funds are limited. As a result, we need to spend them wisely attacking the greatest problem. Our disagreement is not about the need to spend money — that is something we must do -- but on the best way to spend it effectively to improve health and to save lives. One of my concerns with the NCMC as proposed is that it will drain off those funds that are needed to attack the greatest problem. And as Mr. Chittams points out, the most critical need is primary and outpatient specialist care, especially east of the river. That is where we should be concentrating our resources, not on building more hospital beds west of the Anacostia. In fact, there is a high likelihood that the NCMC will eliminate all hospital beds east of the river by forcing the closure of Greater Southeast Community Hospital.

Concerning emergency services, I have argued before that recent events have shown that the problem with emergency care is not access to trauma centers. The problem is the unequal distribution of emergency response units. As Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray has said that the fact that, “two ambulances in this ward serve 70,000 people is outrageous.” He is exactly right. But the NCMC will not solve that problems, and may drain away funds needed to solve that problem.

I would respectfully submit that the win-win we are all looking for is contained in the ANC 6B resolution, adopted unanimously last November, which “urges the City Administration and the Council to develop alternative proposals that will better address the health care needs of the citizens of the District of Columbia, including more appropriate health care facilities on the HillEast Waterfront.” Coming up with an alternative plan for a more appropriate medical facility on Reservation 13 and for improved access to primary and specialist care, especially east of the river will require DC citizens to come together. My optimistic side says we can put aside all the bickering, as Mr. Chittams suggests. Let us do so.

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NCMC
Raymond S. Blanks, The Gerasene Group, brsb20002@aol.com

The fact remains that more than 50 percent of the District’s residents live at least a half-hour away from a nearby hospital. The fact remains that residents in Wards 5 through 8 also utilize emergency medical assistance more than any other sector of the city. The recent death of David Rosenbaum makes more evident the need for swift emergency medical service. Beyond the geographic disadvantages facing us is the added critical matter that many in these areas have serious and high rates of chronic diseases and many are not even aware of health problems because they have no health insurance or wait until they become ill before seeking medical care in a hospital emergency room. Equally important, primary care alone will not suddenly create a medical safety net for the tens of thousands without an adequate health infrastructure in southeast.

I celebrate, as a member of this new citizen’s group, the involvement of residents who have entered this debate not seeking to distort the facts or play the race card. They have spoken simply to include our views on this important public policy issue of health. I do not support NCMC because it will be developed by a local black institution, Howard University Hospital, or because it will largely serve poor and black residents at risk and without adequate medical services in their community. NCMC will move the District forward in providing health justice that benefits all residents rather than continue to ignore the pressing health care needs of those east of the river.

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Jonathan Rees for DC City Council, Ward 3
Jonathan R. Rees, admin@dc2006.net

My political campaign consists of: 1) over 11,000 E-mail addresses to ward 3 voters, 2) mini flyers printed in the Dominican Republic at one sixth the price you would pay for them in DC, and 3) a force of Latinos who distribute them with me every day in Ward 3. I do not and will not accept money from any, organization, corporation, or PAC directly or indirectly, as I refuse to whore myself and sell out the voter John Q. Public down the road. I only want to owe the voters, not organizations, corporations, or PACs, as that is a sell out of the people who voted.

My web site has had over 12,800 hits since I started. I do not rub shoulders with the Democratic party elite, I do not attend political socials, I do not ask for any help of those already in power and I will not debate my rivals but take my position on the issues and what I want to do to voters (one on one) at my own expense and hard labor. While I am 51 years old, I walk five miles every night up and down the streets of Ward 3 putting my mini flyer on telephone poles, on car windows, and in doors, and I will not stop until September 12, 2006. My vision of America/DC is for a city council that is for the people by the people and not for organizations, corporations, or PACs or by the organizations, corporations, or PACs.

I came to the USA in 1958 as a very sickly 2/12 year old child of 13 pounds, malnourished, abused, in need of emergency surgery but I survived, grew stronger, and today, like so many people, I am tired of the way things are, but mainly the sell out of the voters to the organizations, corporations, or PACs who dictate the agenda of the DC government at the expense of the people. My campaign slogan, “It’s All About You,” refers to John Q. Public not ABC Corporation, and that is what I am all about.

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It Takes Leadership to Forge a Meaningful Comprehensive Plan
Len Sullivan, lsnarpac@bellatlantic.net

While the city’s leadership and activists obsess over a controversial baseball stadium and an even more controversial hospital, DC’s small but dedicated long-range planning staff is trying to put together by midyear a new twenty-year Comprehensive Plan for our capital city. They are working from an ethereal “vision” of some urban nirvana, self-serving inputs from every local advocacy group, very little quantitative back-up, and several unsynchronized single-agency midrange plans. There is little focus on citywide cohesion, and none on financial practicality, regional complementarity, or national symbolism. The result is almost certain to be a compendium of un-weighted platitudes, assembled from the bottom up with little overarching thematic guidance from above. Now is the time for such high-level intervention, not when the art work is done.

One key section of this plan is its “Housing Element,” It should provide guidelines for the evolution of DC’s residential mix, the lifeblood of its body politic. Housing influences those who will live here, work, play, drive, vote, pays taxes, and govern here. But the planners are stuck with adapting a single-minded, midrange proposal from affordable housing advocates. NARPAC has spent two months gathering relevant new statistical data, arguing for quantitative goals over banalities, and focusing on attracting the changing residential species, instead of continuing to sustain a disproportionate share of the region’s disadvantaged. Transportation inputs promise to be even less appropriate.

Feel free to rummage through our seven new chapters at http://www.narpac.org/REXHOUSE.HTM and inform your own thinking about the proper scope of comprehensive planning for national capital city living. And if you run into any of the city’s present leaders, you might suggest that signing off on a half-baked legacy for their successors will not promote the sound evolution of the world’s mostly keenly watched capital city.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

Ward Six Democrats, February 15
Jan Eichhorn, ward6dems@aol.com

Please join us next Wednesday, February 15, 7:00 p.m., at our Ward 6 Dems Meeting at Capitol Hill SDA Church, 914 Massachusetts Avenue, NE (use community room entrance on side). The meeting will be an issue forum on affordable housing with Angie Rogers, Policy Analyst, DC Fiscal Policy Institute; Robert Pohlman, executive director of the Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development Coalition; Antonia Rosanelli of the Crowell & Moring Affordable Housing Initiative; and Linda Leaks of Empower DC. There will also be a report on the status of the School Modernization Bill by Iris Toyer, Co-Chair of Parents United for DCPS.

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Multilingual Poetry Reading, February 16
James Kennedy, ESL202@hotmail.com

On Thursday, February 16, at 6:30-8:00 p.m., Translators Without Borders @ Borders, a Metropolitan Washington, DC, group of interpreters and translators, will present its fourth annual multilingual poetry reading. Come and enjoy poems presented in a variety of languages and in English translation. At Southeast Neighborhood Library, 403 7th Street, SE, steps away from the Eastern Market Metro station on the Blue/Orange lines. Free. For more information, call 698-3377.

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The Untold Story of Emmett Till, February 17
Michael Andrews, mandrews@udc.edu

The University of the District of Columbia will host a special presentation of the film “The Untold Story of Emmett Till” as part of the University’s “UDC Pride Week” celebration on Friday, February 17, at 6:00 p.m. in the University Auditorium. This presentation, which will include a panel discussion immediately following the film, is part of the University’s Black History Month recognition. This landmark film recounts the murder of Emmett Till, a Chicago teenager who, while on a visit to Mississippi, was murdered and his body dumped in the Tallahatchie River in the small town of Money, Mississippi in August 1955. The film demonstrates the horrors of racism and how Till’s slaying reverberated around the world.

The film’s producer, Keith Beauchamp, will be present and will introduce the film. A panel discussion, themed Healing Through Justice, will explore the social issues and ramifications explored in the film. This theme was chosen so the audience can leave with a positive message and an opportunity to be empowered to affect positive change in their communities. The event, which is free and open to the public, is for all ages. At the time of this release, the following individuals have agreed to participate in the panel discussion: Keith Beauchamp, producer; Donald Temple, Temple Law Offices; John Brittain, Chief Counsel & Senior Deputy Director, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; Nkechi Taifa, Senior Policy Analyst at the Open Society Policy Center; and moderator Mark Thompson, MX Radio.

The film and panel discussion will take place in the University Auditorium (Building 46 East) on the University’s Van Ness Campus. The Auditorium is located on Windham Circle off Connecticut Avenue, NW. The campus is conveniently located on the Red Line of the Metro at the Van Ness/UDC stop.

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Discover Engineering Family Day, February 18
Lauren Searl, lsearl@nbm.org

Saturday, February 18, 10:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Festival: Discover Engineering Family Day. The National Building Museum and The National Engineers Week Committee welcome families, scout groups, and all curious visitors to this fascinating festival. Meet engineers and discover how they turn their ideas into reality through engaging hands-on activities and demonstrations. Make slime, watch US FIRST robot demonstrations and competitions, design bridges and helicopters out of paper, build cantilevers from drinking straws, solve math challenges for prizes, and much more! Young visitors will also enjoy special appearances by Harry and Digit from the PBS animated kids’ series Cyberchase. Free. $5 suggested donation. Most appropriate for children ages 5-13. At the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro Red Line. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.  Scouts and large groups should register with the Family Programs Coordinator at 272-2448, ext. 5213 or family@nbm.org.

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