Taking Aim
Dear Aimers:
Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Second
Amendment case of Heller v. DC. As you know, the District’s
main argument was that the Second Amendment guarantee of a right “to
keep and bear arms” has nothing to do with weapons, but that “arms”
refers only to upper body appendages, as in arms and legs. DC’s
attorney, Walter Dellinger, said that in his opinion the meaning of the
Second Amendment is that two-armed soldiers make for a better militia
than one-armed or even armless soldiers, so the government shouldn’t
chop off potential militia members’ arms. Several Supreme Court
justices seemed to be skeptical of DC’s claim that the Second
Amendment is simply a guarantee against governmental amputations. Other
justices, however, seemed to support the city’s position. Justice
Stephen Breyer asked Heller’s attorney, Alan Gura, if he disputed the
duty of government officials to violate citizens’ Constitutional
rights if the officials thought they had a really, really good reason
to, and Gura, at the urging of Justice Scalia, said “Yes.” If you’re
at all skeptical of my account of the arguments (although I have no idea
why you should be), you can read the transcript yourself at http://www.dcwatch.com/issues/gun080318.pdf
or hear the proceedings at rtsp://video.c-span.org/archive/sc/sc031808_2amendment.rm.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Judging by what I’ve been reading lately, the Supreme Court seems
to be hard at work confusing itself: a militia vs. the militia? If
weapons-appropriate-to-a-militia are legal, might I expect to confront a
tank coming down Euclid Street? The Court seems to believe in the rights
of states, except when it doesn’t. Some Justices go on about “original
intent” except when inconvenient to their argument. We can’t seem to
get out of our box.
Suggestions: the practical: treat weapons like automobiles — the
gun gets a license, you get a license, you get insurance, you get tested
for skill and safety. Armed when drunk, armed without a license, armed
recklessly are treated along the same analogy. The literal: anyone
buying a weapon is enrolled in our new Militia. There will be mandatory
weapons training and drill. Anyone whose weapon is used dangerously or
unlawfully (by anyone) is subject to court martial, with the rules of
evidence of a court martial. Original intent: Americans have the right
to own any muzzle-loading weapon.
Just for a change, wouldn’t it be neat if we thought about instead
of fought about it?
[Since, judging by justices’ questions during the oral argument, at
least a majority of the Supreme Court seems ready to affirm the Second
Amendment’s guarantee of an individual right to keep and bear arms,
Bruce is correct that we should debate how the city government should
react to such a ruling. Bruce is also right that the Supreme Court would
certainly accept “reasonable” regulations on gun ownership, although
it is in doubt what standard of review the Court will require. The
question is whether the mayor and city council will adopt reasonable
regulations that would pass either an intermediate or strict standard of
review, or whether they will be defiant and pass regulations that are so
stringent and draconian that they amount to another gun ban, and lead to
another decade of litigation. I take Bruce’s suggestion of mandatory
militia membership for those who want to own a gun to be a joke, since
the recognition of an individual right would sever it from the
explanatory militia clause. However, I’m not sure that he doesn’t
mean seriously his suggestion that the Second Amendment guarantees only
the right to own the kinds of guns that existed in the eighteenth
century. If basic rights were dependent on there being no technological
advances, then wouldn’t the First Amendment also guarantee freedom of
the press only to those who use hand presses and not to those who use
electric presses, radio, film, television, or the Internet? — Gary
Imhoff]
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First it was the baseball stadium’s failing to hire enough DC
laborers, now Eliot Spitzer is shipping in his hookers from New York!
What ever happened to DC jobs for DC residents? Should we really sit
back and let the whole world think that our city can’t provide a few
good (call) girls? Where is the outcry?
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ANC 6A Requests Withdrawal of Current H Street
TIF
Joseph Fengler, Chair ANC 6A, fengler6a02@yahoo.com
[An open letter to city council Chairman Vincent Gray] At our
regularly scheduled and properly noticed meeting on March 13, our
Commission voted 7-0 to request the council to withdraw the current Tax
Increment Financing (TIF) Program for H Street, NE, and approve a TIF
program that will encourage diversification and preservation of existing
small properties versus providing incentives for consolidation of
property for large scale development. The Tax Increment Financing (TIF)
Program is an economic development tool administered jointly by the
Office of the Chief Financial Officer and the Office of the Deputy Mayor
for Planning and Economic Development. This program allows the District
government to sell bonds backed by a development’s future taxes, with
the bond money helping to pay the developer’s construction costs. TIF
is not a loan; the development’s taxes, which would already have to be
paid, are used to pay back the principal and interest on the bonds.
Development costs that can be covered range from surveys to demolition
to preservation.
A TIF project must satisfy two criteria. One, provide contributions
to achieving public objectives that could not be achieved without TIF.
Two, provide prospects for achieving a positive net fiscal impact. TIF
projects approved in the past were for major downtown project including
entertainment, retail, housing, offices, and parking, and neighborhood
retail center on city-owned or privately held land which has remained
underutilized. The $25 million TIF project approved for H Street are for
projects that exceed 10,000 square feet of retail total with more than
5,000 square feet should set aside for an anchor retail use.
Accordingly, only large lots like the H Street Connection and AutoZone
sites appear eligible. The RFP also strongly encourages applicants to
obtain maximum density through the Planned Unit Development process.
While the RFP does encourage applicants to create “partnerships”
with existing businesses, small business owners can only receive funding
if they are part of a larger project anchored by a large landholder.
It is the large square foot requirement that is a problem. While the
TIF program has been used by the city to spur large-scale development
that is likely to be undertaken without public assistance, the H Street
NE properties are not conducive to such an approach. The foundation of H
Street is based in the diversity of small businesses. Our community
needs a TIF program that strives to preserve small business diversity
and not large-scale uniform homogenization and consolidation. The
current TIF favors land consolidation and not individual diversity. The
council should not adopt a TIF that excludes small land owners from the
benefits provided to large land owners. We urge the council to rescind
the current TIF for H Street NE and authorize one that allows individual
business on corridor to actively participate in this critical
revitalization program.
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I was recently made aware, by Stephen Pearlstein’s article on UDC
in the Washington Post [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/04/AR2008030402735.html],
that Alice Rivlin at Brookings was preparing a new set of proposals
involving the creation of a system of junior colleges for the District
of Columbia. This has obvious implications for UDC, not all of them
adverse, but certainly requiring a rethinking of many aspects of the
University’s operations. I wish to make the interconnection more
explicit, and to connect them with the present alterations in the
overall position of DC public schools under the direction of Mayor Fenty
and his appointed Superintendent, Ms. Rhee. I take as a premise the
assumption that any scheme to provide college or university level
education must take into account the now forty-year experience of UDC
and its struggles with itself and with the challenges peculiar to the
District’s educational system, which reveal simply that nothing has
worked very well or for a long period of time, and that it is time to
rethink the assumptions upon previous proposals have foundered.
The principal lesson of all of this, it seems to me, is that the
transformation of schools and colleges must involve a nearly
simultaneous program of change in the society which largely sends them
its students, and is dependent upon the schools for its own well-being
and ultimate prosperity. The business models that dominate our present
landscape do, of course, effect a transformation of DC but largely for
the benefit of the city for a future population, hardly at all for its
present one. The changes are most obvious and visible at the center and
least obvious in the neighborhoods where most of the affected population
actually lives and works. At present, over half of UDC’s students
stand in need of remedial work in both mathematics and English. They are
therefore casualties before the event, and the jobs that become
available to change their situation do not come to them, or do so only
with difficulty. The profile of employability and success is marked by
this continuity, which has been the story since 1968, and is largely the
inevitable result of the failures of DCPS before and after that date. I
stipulate these, and leave to others to recount them.
This would suggest the pressing need for a new logic of practices,
personnel, and administration, built around and giving to these facts
the most careful and complete attention. It should be pointed out that
the average age of most students at UDC throughout this entire period
has been close to 26-27, requiring thought about what the University has
done and is doing in terms of adult-education, with an almost eight- to
nine-year interval between graduation from high school and higher
education. Too little has been done to acknowledging this demographic
condition. We are now presented with an opportunity forced on us by
circumstances. In the present budgetary crisis now experienced by most
funding sources for higher education, budget shortfalls force states to
think of ways to transfer funds from failed or less-efficient
institutions to new ones with better prospects of success. With due
care. this apparently adverse circumstance might, for a short time,
present the District with the chance of doing better now what was first
attempted four decades ago.
Why not 1) concentrate resources. presently diffused over far too
many empty degree courses in too many subjects, upon this neglected
group. 2) Look at older plans for creating at UDC a pre-college year
where most students would concentrate on removing these historic
defects. This would be a huge change in what is presently thought of as
“extension,” and now become the focus of the actual and needed work
on the part of incoming students. 3) Placement out of this needed work
would be by an examination developed to get at real capacities, to
assure the capacity to do college level work. There would be either no
time limits or, perhaps, at most one year of this, with attention to
individual problems and large hirings of subject specialists (especially
in mathematics and English) who are also aware of the social dimensions
of what they are trying to do. 4) Coordinate more closely with the local
and regional job markets, and create a more rapid and more flexible
program (curriculum) design in whatever components of the present
university survived a new analysis of purpose. 5) A fraction of the
present budget of UDC, perhaps $125 million, would surely suffice for
this kind of thing. 6) New appointments, especially of younger staff
with commitment to this work rather than to academic careers elsewhere,
would have to be made. 7) New boards and a minimized administration,
with a single-minded dedication to clear tasks and a willingness to
accept risks of failure for promise of success, would also be needed.
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DC House & Building History on Goggle Maps
Paul Williams, oldhousehistory@aol.com
It’s taken us awhile, but we have plotted nearly 2,000 house and
building histories that we have researched in Washington, DC, on Google
Maps, and will add others in the future as research is completed. Each
red pushpin includes house or building address, date constructed,
architect and builder. There are two maps:
NW Washington, DC (two pages, so scroll down address list for page
2): http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=105014739511729546422.000446d96dcf8d9246a9e&ll=38.934128,-77.057784&spn=0.05862,0.11673&z=13
And NE, SE, & SW Washington, DC: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=105014739511729546422.000448a714ff4bc1fafb7&ll=38.911115,-76.994226&spn=0.117277,0.233459&z=12
Enjoy! (If we have researched on your block, your entitled to $100
off a house history of your own at WashingtonHistory.com)
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No Computer Tax, No Tolls
Robert J. Kabel, press@dcgop.com
[Open letter to city council Chairman Vincent Gray] The DC Republican
Committee strongly objects to the idea of introducing a commuter tax in
the form of new tolls as proposed by the Metropolitan Washington Council
of Governments Transportation Policy Board.
As Chairman of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning
Board, we encourage you to consider the additional financial burden
tolls will place on commuters and DC residents alike. We implore you to
identify other avenues to locate sources of funding for our roads,
bridges, and tunnels that will not raise taxes or fees.
By introducing tolls in the Washington Metropolitan area, many of our
most vulnerable citizen,; those on fixed income, and the elderly will
struggle to find resources to pay for tolls. Additionally, with the
introduction of tolls, many residents will fear the continual increase
of fees which will discourage business from moving to DC and place
another financial hardship on those businesses already in DC.
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DCPS Firings, Continued
Ted Gest, tgest at sas.upenn.edu
Gary Imhoff and I agree on one major point about the firings: DCPS
has a lot of explaining to do about who was fired and why. Example: It
may be fine to fire many data processing people if that function is
being taken up by the executive branch as a whole, but I don’t recall
seeing a full explanation of that by the Fenty-Rhee administration. As
for “due process” rights, sure, employees can complain about this,
but I thought that point had been made to the city council before the
law was passed allowing such firings. It would be nice to know if the
administration specifically determined that the fired employees were not
eligible for other school system jobs, but without knowing that, it is
hard to evaluate what happened.
As another poster noted, the firing procedures used are standard in
business today. It doesn’t seem that the administration is guilty of
particularly cruel or brutal methods. The dispute over whether employees
could take their personal belongings immediately (two media reports) or
had to come back to get them (one report) seems fairly minor in the
overall scheme of things. Unfortunately, the central office employees
should have seen this coming, after all the public discussion of it. But
the taxpayers still deserve more details.
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After my going to the US Attorney with my grievance against Mayor
Adrian Fenty, the ban against DC government workers receiving our
E-mails and being able to access our blog from work appears to have been
lifted (for now), as many are reporting to us.
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Opting Out of Comcast and RCN
Regina Owens, rgowens331@msn.com
Gwen Southerland wrote about the bait and switch tactics employed by
Comcast [themail, February 3]. She is not alone, and neither is Comcast.
I experienced the same problem with RCN. The DC Cable Commission was
very responsive and attentive and put me in touch with their contact at
RCN, who was equally responsive. She assured me there would be a
correction upon receipt of the next bill. It never happened. Everyday, I
spent at least an hour on hold awaiting a live body with whom I could
discuss the issue. Sometimes the result would be a closed office and a
message to call back during business hours, and other times the live
body I reached would transfer me to someone at another division who
would indicate it was not their problem. I paid the bill because they
severed my service for nonpayment (and, yes, I do need cable in my
home). The entire cable industry needs to be overhauled and better
regulated.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
National Building Museum Events, March 26
Jazmine Zick, jzick@nbm.org
Wednesday, March 26, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Smart Growth: Revitalizing Urban
Neighborhoods. Jair Lynch, president and CEO of the Jair Lynch Company,
presents his firm’s experience applying smart growth techniques to
revitalize urban neighborhoods in Washington, DC. Free. Registration not
required. At the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary
Square stop, Metro Red Line. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
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DC Youth Advocacy Training, March 22
Martina Gillis, martina@legalclinic.org
This Saturday, March 22, from 12:30-3:30 p.m., the DC Youth Advisory
Council, the Fair Budget Coalition and the DC Women’s Agenda are
providing an advocacy training for DC Youth, 13-24 years old. The
workshop will be held at The True Reformer Building, 1200 U Street, NW.
The workshop will prepare young people to participate in the democratic
process, including an overview of the DC budget process and tips and
role play for meeting with and giving testimony to DC leaders. Please
help spread the word and encourage all youth that you know to attend.
Please RSVP to Kristi Matthews, 328-1262.
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UDC Book, Literary, and Poetry Festival, March
27-29
Juanita Britton, busybee@bzbinternational.com
Literature Live, a three-day book festival celebrating the diverse
and vibrant literary life of Washington, DC, will be held on March 27,
28, and 29. There will be book signings and sales, poetry readings, a
poetry slam contest, readings, and panel discussions. Meet DC agents,
editors, and authors. Event locations will be Busboys and Poets, the
Thurgood Marshall Center, and the University of the District of
Columbia. This event is presented by UDC and Hurston/Wright. For a
complete schedule of events, times, and locations, visit http://www.hurstonwright.org
or http://www.udc.edu.
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CFSA Budget Briefing, April 8
Susie Cambria, scambria@dckids.org
DC Action for Children and others are sponsoring a community briefing
on the mayor’s proposed FY 2009 budget for the Child and Family
Services Agency (CFSA). The event is being held on April 8 from 9:30
a.m.-12:00 p.m. at the Goethe-Institut, 812 7th Street, NW. Attendees
will hear from Dr. Sharlynn Bobo, director of CFSA, and will have the
opportunity to ask questions following her presentation. Meeting
attendees will receive a copy of the CFSA budget, a list of child- and
youth-related hearings, and other important information about the budget
process and advocacy. You may attend for free but registration is
required. Send your name, organization, title, complete address,
telephone number, fax number, and E-mail address to DC Action for
Children, bjamieson@dckids.org.
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Lorraine H. Whitlock Memorial Dinner, April 25
Villareal Johnson, vjohnson2006@gmail.com
Join the Ward 7 Democrats as we celebrate the life of Lorraine H.
Whitlock, a heroine for the ages, at the fifth annual Lorraine H.
Whitlock memorial dinner. Her memorial is a public testimonial to a
needed service to the people of Ward 7. Help us to continue her legacy
by passing her tradition of service on to our next generation of
resident.
The dinner will be held on Friday, April 25, at 7:00 p.m. (doors open
at 6:30 p.m.), at St. Luke’s Center, St. Luke’s Catholic Church,
49th and East Capitol Streets, SE. Save on tickets when you purchase by
March 31: single ticket, $35; table for eight, $240. After March 31:
single ticket, $50; table for eight, $400. To sponsor an advertisement
in the souvenir program or for more information about ticket purchases,
please contact Villareal Johnson, vjohnson2006@gmail.com
or 582-9056. Proceeds help support the Lorraine H. Whitlock Memorial
Scholarship Fund, which is awarded to graduating Ward 7 seniors
attending a Ward 7 high school.
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