Calling Names
Dear Namers:
Below, Phil Shapiro notes a Washington Post article about
renaming schools. Just as good is the story that last week Pittsburgh
decided to improve the image of its public schools by dropping the word
“public” from all the schools’ names. They are adding the word
“Pittsburgh” instead, which would seem to undermine any image
improvement that would come from pretending the schools aren’t public
(http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/education/13660113/detail.html).
I’m looking forward to DC’s copying this great advance soon, and if
the Deputy Mayor for Education wants to hire me as a consultant to give
them the advice to do it, I’ll take the job. I’ll charge just a
couple hundred thousand dollars, which will be a better value for the
money than DC gets from most of its consultants, and I’ll throw in a
new school motto for free.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
In the July 8 issue of themail, in “A Week at the Beach for Mayor
Fenty,” I wrote about how difficult it was to get the mayor’s office
to confirm that he was out of town and at the beach. This weekend, the
mayor’s press office made another attempt to keep the mayor’s
schedule and out-of-town trips secret. On Friday, I received an E-mail
from someone indicating that Fenty had been seen at Baltimore-Washington
Airport boarding a Southwest Airlines flight to Manchester, New
Hampshire. After noting that Fenty had no public appearances over the
weekend — and wouldn’t even be attending the funeral for firefighter
James McRae — I E-mailed the mayor’s press secretary to ask where he
was and what he was doing. I didn’t receive any response, so I
forwarded the E-mail again, and still have not received a reply.
During the initial six months of the Fenty administration, it has
become clear that Fenty and the executive office of the mayor are
obsessed with controlling his image and limiting the information that
they release. City Hall reporters share stories about how his staff has
warned them not to write negative stories about the mayor and his
administration, and punished them after they have. Conversely,
“good” reporters who refrain from criticizing the mayor are rewarded
with exclusives and scoops. The most blatant example of press favoritism
to date was when the mayor told the Washington Post about his
selection of Michelle Rhee as school chancellor, and gave the Post’s
Metro section and editorial board two days of exclusive access for
interviews and photo opportunities, before Fenty made an 11:45 p.m.
telephone call to Council Chairman Vincent Gray to tell him the name of
his selection on the night prior to the public announcement. Reporters,
at least reporters who are not in favor, are being told by the
chancellor’s office, by the sizable press office of DC public schools,
and by the office of the Deputy Mayor for Education that they have to
get all of their information about the schools from the mayor’s press
office, which tightly controls, limits, and denies access to
information. When I asked Rhee questions regarding the hires she had
made in her immediate staff, and told her that her office and the DCPS
press office said they couldn’t provide any information about them,
Rhee herself told me that she was being “handled” by the mayor’s
office, and that all inquiries had to be made to the mayor’s press
office, and all information would be released by them.
###############
Last Thursday was to be the first payday for the DC Summer Jobs
Program. You would think that since the director (her name is Summer
Spencer) is new, she would have made sure that what has happened to the
youth of DC for the last two years didn’t end up happening for the
third year, but it did. The D of Employment has over thirteen thousand
youths in the summer job program; they only paid a little more than nine
thousand youths, which means that nearly four thousand did not get paid.
Had this been adults working for DOE, there would have been a riot on H
Street.
Why is it that for the last three years DC Summer Jobs cannot figure
out how to get these kids paid on time? I reminded the mayor about one
month ago that when he was campaigning for office both he and I were
interviewed by Channel 5 about the youth not receiving their pay under
the Williams administration. Now Fenty’s administration has done the
same. I must admit that Dan Tangherlini’s executive assistant, Tanya,
assisted every parent who called their office on Thursday and Friday,
but the fact remains that this problem is now three years old. Meeting
the payroll should have been tested and fixed before the payments were
due. Stay tuned — July 26 is the next payday for the youth. Let’s
see if the youth can get paid.
###############
Despite a $50 Million Public Subsidy, Pollin Isn’t
Loosening the Purse Strings
Tom Monroe, tmonroe@yahoo.com
See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/14/AR2007071401137.html.
In this article, it is revealed that Abe Pollin is resolutely against
exceeding the league’s self-set salary threshold, though that’s
likely the only way the Wizards team can hope to keep up with the other
division and conference rivals. The total amount that the team would go
over that threshold is probably $1 million currently and possibly $5
million more in future if a superstar warranted it. Meanwhile, the city
is doing its utmost to steer much larger sums of public money ($50
million to be exact) into renovating the club and luxury suite sections
of Verizon Center, despite Pollin’s obvious ability to pay for
renovations himself. In other words, Pollin practices fiscal restraint
on the payout side to an absurd degree and to the likely detriment of
the team he’s mismanaged for years along with the Capitals (although
to be fair, the Caps’ mismanagement is now being spearheaded by the
equally payroll-shy Ted Leonsis), while he demands public largesse be
shown towards fixing up his private enterprise in the wake of the
mega-giveaway of public dollars to the baseball project.
All this leads up to the obvious question: Why the heck couldn’t
the mayor and DC council have shown some fiscal spine to Abe Pollin in
the wake of the latter’s refusal to spend adequate money on his own
product? I guess after the stadium debacle, all evidence of standing
strong against sports moguls went away, as the lure of access to more
luxury suites as part of the Verizon Center proved irresistible to these
fat cats thinly disguised as public servants. Either way, Pollin’s
two-faced handling of the city and its citizens in this situation
certainly tarnishes his self-promoted humanitarian awards and such that
are pointed to after each debacle his teams experience because of
underfunding or simply horrific management (see his mishandling of the
Jordan situation). Now that Pollin has taken his antics to the public
trough to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, his defenders in the
media shouldn’t be so quick to brush his incompetence under the rug.
###############
On the Front Page of the Washington
Post
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com
I was so pleased the Washington Post published a front page
story about changing trends in the naming of public schools (see http://tinyurl.com/3cz9gx).
There is perhaps no other issue more vital to the future of our children
than the name of the public school they attend. My friends and I talk
constantly about this topic, often wringing our hands in the process.
Often I lie awake at night worrying about the names of public schools. (WTF?)
###############
Does anyone know why there are regulations regarding car window
tinting? Cars get hot in the summer; I wanted to keep mine cooler this
year. I’ve had melanoma in the past; I’d prefer to minimize my
exposure. So I fail to comprehend why DC feels its a crime to tint my
car windows. Then there’s the complete inability to find out what the
laws are until you get the ticket from the police officer.
###############
Recently, Deborah Jeane Palfrey made her telephone bills, including
many calls to 202, available to the public via the Internet, but she did
not make them easy to access. Her bills are in TIFF format stored in ZIP
files. When I first tried to view one of these files, my default Windows
configuration would only show me the first page of each, with no
indication of subsequent pages in the file. I fixed this by converting
these phone records into PDF format. I have uploaded the bills for the
years 2000 to 2006, split into files of five megabytes or less for
easier access, to the Forest Hills Yahoo Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Forest_Hills_DC/files/Deborah%20Jeane%20Palfrey/.
You may have to setup a free Yahoo ID to access the files, but otherwise
they should be as accessible as any other PDF file. If you find any
interesting numbers, please let me know.
###############
A Splendid City
Ed T Barron, edtb1@macdotcom
Roomie and I spent three touring days in Chicago, which could better
be known as “Bus City” with all the bus routes they have. Buses run
everywhere and with a remarkable frequency. The city is clean, vibrant,
and with very polite denizens. The Chicago version of DC’s Metrorail
is the “L” and subway system. Many of the train cars are old and
many stations much older. Quite a few stations are not handicapped
accessible. The escalators all seem to be working. Fares are two bucks
on the rail and very well integrated buses. Visitors to this nice city,
with its dynamite skyline, can get cheap multi-day transit passes ($12
for a 72-hour pass) and do a lot of sightseeing right from the elevated
lines and buses. This is a city I could live in.
###############
When Do You Stop the Presses?
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com
Last month I invited readers of themail to consider whether the Washington
Post could summon the courage to be the first large city newspaper
to publish exclusively online. While that question might have sounded
outlandish, Business Week columnist Jon Fine probes similar water
in his latest column, “When Do You Stop the Presses?” (See http://tinyurl.com/2c6t36.)
The transition between newspaper’s print and online publishing life
looks for all purposes like a deer crossing a road. If you hesitate too
long, you run the risk of getting run over. To my mind, the time for
tentative steps is rapidly coming to a close. I wonder if this city has
any leaders that were not elected to office. Maybe it does. If it doesn’t,
get ready for plenty of venison.
###############
Re: “Thieves in themail,” July 11. With regard to the city
council’s July 10 legislative session, most of the legislation,
resolutions, etc., that were acted upon are not yet available either
online or in the Legislative Services office. I was told it “could be
quite some time until the public will be able to get the legislation.”
###############
Rubber Stamping the Green Machine
Jonathan R. Rees, jrrees2006@verizon.net
The current DC city council may be the most spineless council the
District of Columbia has experienced. This council seems to be rubber
stamping everything that is thrown its way from Mayor Adrian Fenty
without really questioning a thing, although they will give us the
impression they do.
Either this council is fearful of Fenty, thinks it will get some
reward for going along, or is acting out of sheer ignorance of the
issues. No matter how you slice it, this council is not acting
responsibly, and if Fenty’s grand scheme does not pan out, not only
may Fenty be out the door in 2010, but some members of the council may
go with him.
###############
Getting Off on the Wrong Education Foot?
Len Sullivan, lsnarpac@bellatlantic.net
Unlike many Washingtonians more intimately involved, NARPAC was
encouraged by Mayor Fenty’s plan to take over the school system, and
to establish a Deputy Mayor’s office through which to integrate the
full range of city and regional players. Chairman Gray’s decision to
exercise council oversight through the Committee of the Whole reinforced
the concept that fixing DC’s typically urban educational deficit
required a coordinated citywide effort. We therefore set about writing a
new web site chapter summarizing our dozens of analyses and editorials
on this subject over the past decade. We include our own ambitious
suggestions for how to disrupt the cycle of poverty perpetuated by
educational opportunities missed.
From our standpoint, the main issue for national disdain is not how
few of DC’s kids make it to the top of the national class, but how
many leak out the bottom of the class to perpetuate a lifetime of urban
blight. The national disgrace is not too much mediocrity, it is too much
utter failure. From this perspective, we seriously doubt that the new
Fenty team has the vision to adopt the necessary scope of action. We
summarize our own “articles of faith,” answer our own key questions,
make our own recommendations. We conclude that despite wildly excessive
salaries and dubious endorsements, this innocent, if not naive, new team
will end up kicking the same old can down the same old street. Check out
our views at http://www.narpac.org/PEPRIMER.HTM,
and see why we (begrudgingly) think the Capitol Hill neighborhood folks
have a more practical local approach to the problem than the city at http://www.narpac.org/INTHOPHO.HTM.
###############
This is to advise that the July 2007 on-line edition has been
uploaded and may be accessed at http://www.intowner.com.
Included are the lead stories, community news items and crime reports,
editorials (including prior months’ archived), restaurant reviews
(prior months’ also archived), and the text from the ever-popular
“Scenes from the Past” feature (the accompanying images can be seen
in the archived PDF version). Also included are all current classified
ads. The complete issue (along with prior issues back to January 2004)
also is available in PDF file format directly from our home page at no
charge simply by clicking the link in the Current & Back Issues
Archive. Here you will be able to view the entire issue as it appears in
print, including all photos and advertisements. The next issue will
publish on August 10 (the 2nd Friday of the month, as always). The
complete PDF version will be posted by the preceding night or early that
Friday morning at the latest, following which the text of the lead
stories, community news, and selected features will be uploaded shortly
thereafter.
To read this month’s lead stories, simply click the link on the
home page to the following headlines: 1) “DC’s Main Library Building
Given Landmark Protection — Improvements Already Evident”; 2)
“17th Street Business Soon to Get Boost — Empty Spaces Not to be
Empty for Long”; 3) “Dupont Circle Metro Q Street Entrance Now
Graced by Whitman Poem Excerpts — Official Dedication Set for
Saturday, July 14.”
Special note: readers are encouraged to print out, fill out and send
back our reader survey, which is conveniently available by clicking the
link on our home page and printing that page, filling it out, and then
either scanning and attaching to an E-mail addressed to admin@intowner.com
(please do not embed into E-mail), faxing to 265-0949, or returning by
postal mail.
###############
CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
DC Public Library Events, July 17, 19
Randi Blank, randi.blank@dc.gov
Tuesday, July 17, 12:00 p.m., West End Neighborhood Library, 1101
24th Street, NW. West End Book Club. We will discuss House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton. For more information, call 724-8707.
Tuesday, July 17, 6:30 p.m., Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial
Library, 901 G Street, NW, Room A-5. Author Roger Rapoport will talk
about his new biography of filmmaker Michael Moore, Citizen Moore:
The Life and Times of an American Iconoclast, and show clips from
Moore’s new movie, Sicko. For more information, call 727-2079.
Tuesday, July 17, 7:30 p.m., Palisades Neighborhood Library, 4901 V
Street, NW. Palisades Stamp Club. For more information, call 282-3139.
Thursday, July 19, 1:00 p.m., Chevy Chase Branch Library, 5625
Connecticut Avenue, NW. Summer foreign film series. The first
award-winning film in the series is The King of Masks (1999), a Chinese
film directed by Tian-Ming Wu based on a true story about an aging
street performer known as the King of Masks for his mastery of Sichuan
Change Art. In Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles. Not rated. The
series will continue through August and September. For more information,
call 282-0021.
###############
Historical Society of Washington, DC, Events,
July 18, 28
Bell Clement, clement@historydc.org
An evening of DC fashion with Rosemary E. Reed Miller, Wednesday,
July 18, 5:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. In its third printing, Ms. Miller’s book,
The Threads of Time: The Fabric of History, honors an
often-overlooked talent pool of black women dressmakers and designers
and recognizes how they touched history. Examples of the women
highlighted in the book include Elizabeth Keckley, designer of First
Lady Mary Lincoln’s inauguration dress, which is a part of the
Smithsonian Institution’s First Ladies Exhibit, and Ann Lowe who
designed the wedding dress for First Lady Jackie Kennedy, the most
photographed wedding dress in American history. Join the Historical
Society of Washington, DC, and Ms. Miller, the owner of Dupont Circle’s
Toast and Strawberries boutique, for a delightfully educational and
entertaining evening! Reservations are requested by E-mail with
"Fashion" in the subject line to rsvp@history.dc.org
or by calling 383-1837. The program will take place at the Carnegie
Library on Mount Vernon Square, 801 K Street, NW. Visit the Society’s
web site at http://www.historydc.org.
Wages of War: Bonus Army to Baghdad. In a remarkable show of military
force on Saturday, July 28, 1932, the US military under orders from
President Herbert Hoover drove peacefully demonstrating World War I
veterans from the city. The Historical Society of Washington is
recognizing the 75th anniversary of this monumental event in the fight
for veterans’ benefits and honoring District veterans. The Society
will open its exhibit Wages of War: Bonus Army to Baghdad on Saturday,
July 28, at 1:00 p.m. Saturday’s program is open to the general
public, free of charge, and will feature a viewing of the PBS video, The
March of the Bonus Army, discussion about the 2004 critically-acclaimed
book The Bonus Army: An American Epic, and an opportunity to
honor District veterans. Reservations are requested by E-mail with
"Bonus Army" in the subject line to rsvp@history.dc.org
or by calling 383-1837. The Wages of War: Bonus Army to Baghdad will run
through November 12, 2007, in the Small/Alper Gallery at The Carnegie on
Mount Vernon Square, 801 K Street, NW. Visit the Society’s web site at
http://www.historydc.org.
###############
Spotlight on Design Lecture, July 19
Sara Kabakoff, skabakoff@nbm.org
Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus rejects conventional responses to the
constraints, conditions, and challenges of a given project. His highly
conceptual approach to design developed during his partnership with Rem
Koolhaas. As lead partner of the New York branch of Koolhaas’s Office
for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), he served as project manager for
the acclaimed Seattle Public Library. Now a principal of REX (Ramus-Ella
Architects), he will discuss his young firm’s design methodology in
other high-profile projects, which include the Museum Plaza tower in
Louisville, Kentucky; the Dee & Charles Wyly Theater in Dallas,
Texas; and the new Deichmanske Library in Oslo, Norway. At the National
Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW (Judiciary Square Metro, Red Line),
Thursday, July 19, 7:00-8:30 p.m. $12 Museum members and students. $20
nonmembers. Prepaid registration required. Walk-in registration based on
availability.
###############
themail@dcwatch is an E-mail discussion forum that is published every
Wednesday and Sunday. To subscribe, to change E-mail addresses, or to
switch between HTML and plain text versions of themail, use the
subscription form at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/subscribe.htm.
To unsubscribe, send an E-mail message to themail@dcwatch.com
with “unsubscribe” in the subject line. Archives of past messages
are available at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail.
All postings should also be submitted to themail@dcwatch.com,
and should be about life, government, or politics in the District of
Columbia in one way or another. All postings must be signed in order to
be printed, and messages should be reasonably short — one or two brief
paragraphs would be ideal — so that as many messages as possible can
be put into each mailing.