Homesteading
Dear Homesteaders:
We’ve just gone through an exciting week’s debate over the
failure of former Senator Tom Daschle, who was nominated to be the
Secretary of Health and Human Services, to report all his income and to
pay income taxes on it. Daschle’s supporters claimed it was just an
oversight, an understandable error; his critics insinuated that there
was a simpler explanation. I was surprised that in this debate no one
mentioned that this was not the first time Daschle had creatively
reduced his tax burden, and that there was a local DC tax angle to the
story. In 2004, opponents of Daschle in his last Senate race discovered
that Daschle and his wife had sworn that their house in Washington was
their primary residence in order to get DC’s real property Homestead
deduction. As a Senator from South Dakota, of course, Daschle’s
primary residence would have to be in that state, and it became an
effective minor issue in the campaign not only that Daschle was evading
paying his full property taxes, but also that he had become such a
Washington insider that he was no longer a true South Dakotan. I brought
this up at one of Mayor Williams’ press conferences, and asked whether
DC knew whether any other members of Congress were illegally claiming
the Homestead deduction for their houses in DC. Williams bristled at and
brushed off the question, and as far as I know nobody in the tax office
ever decided to alienate Congress by exposing its property tax cheaters.
Last November, in the course of investigating Congressman Charles Rangel’s
other questionable property deals, it was revealed that Rangel had been
claiming a Homestead deduction on his Washington house for years (http://www.nypost.com/seven/11232008/news/regionalnews/rangel_double_deal_140307.htm).
So, if DC’s tax office won’t investigate, shouldn’t some DC tax
activists volunteer to spend a few days looking through the property tax
database of the Chief Financial Officer, to see what turns up? Expose
who’s leading in the culture of corruption race, and make money for DC
in the process. Are there any takers?
The DC city council’s eighteenth legislative session has been going
on for a month now. This is enough time for councilmembers to introduce
around a hundred bills, ninety-six of which are posted online at the
council’s web site. Below, the DC Republican Committee criticizes
Councilmember Mary Cheh’s Restaurant Hygiene Act. But is this really
the dumbest bill pending in the council? It’s been a month, which is
enough time to provide a lot of competition. How about Cheh’s
Residential Tranquility Act, which is an unconstitutional ban on
demonstrations in residential neighborhoods? Or Harry Thomas’ Safe
Winter Driving Act, forbidding snow and ice on cars? Jack Evans’
Podiatry Definition Act, surely one of the highest priorities of
representative government? Jim Graham’s perennial Fireworks
Neighborhood Safety Act, which bans sparklers and snakes, and his Pit
Bull Public Protection Act, which promotes breed bigotry? Or Graham’s
Taxation Without Representation License Plate Amendment Act, which
advances the liberty of DC residents by forcing them to have license
plates with the “Taxation Without Representation” political motto,
whether they agree with it or not? What’s your favorite (or least
favorite) dumb legislation being considered by the council?
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
Brookland Small Area Plan: Save the Trees
Daniel Wolkoff, amglassart@yahoo.com
[An open letter to Councilman Harry Thomas] The situation with the
Brookland small area plan is extremely frustrating to our community. It
is simply objective that a growth of mature, healthy trees in the center
of the neighborhood is a very healthy and enjoyable thing. Every single
community in this country has the benefit of a square, commons, central
park, lawn or green. The recommendation from our own urban planning
office to destroy this stand of trees and crowd more buildings onto the
metro plaza is unacceptable. We need Councilman Thomas to represent us,
not developers or real estate investors or WMATA. We elected him and
want to continue supporting him.
There is no question this affront could not happen in NW, and we are
sick and tired of being treated poorly while the other section of DC
gets continual benefits, and more and better parks. The small area plan
itself stated that this green and treed space is important to the
community, but they recommend the complete destruction except the area
around Col. Brooks Mansion. This too would be paved over, but they are
restricted from developing it by historic landmark status. That very
historic context of our neighborhood, is eliminated by destroying the
adjacent section of open, treed green space. Back in the 1970’s Metro
was going to build a parking garage; how ugly that would have been.
Brooklanders fought the plan and WMATA left the trees to grow: oaks,
magnolias, holly, and plums. Only to destroy it now? A grove like this
takes sixty years to grow. Where will another place come from as the
district “guides” the total elimination of all open space in our
area with unrestrained development.
We spend billions of dollars to divert the storm sewer runoff, but
don’t preserve the open land that eliminates the runoff and horrible
dumping of millions of gallons of raw sewerage in to the Anacostia,
after heavy rains. This is lousy planning, the same planning that
created this environmental disaster. The Office of Planning has heard
continual community input to save that grove and land, insults us with
condescending meetings, they call us “stakeholders” and says they
are responsive to our wishes. But they will not be honest or consistent
and plan appropriate preservation of this valuable part of our lives.
The revised Small Area Plan lists four alternatives for the metro site,
a building replacing the trees, facing four different ways, and housing
with driveways where the beautiful trees are. This set of alternatives
— come on, give me a break. I have E-mail you a real alternative, and
I want this presented to the city council: The Brookland Community Metro
Plan. Simply develop the section of the metro plaza in front of the
Metro entrance and the huge strip of land along Michigan Avenue around
the one large tree, and place a community kiosk and meeting area on one
end of the common. This is balanced, and preserves everything we enjoy
going to and coming from the subway.
The Office of Planning is bringing all the streets on to the site, as
well as numerous buildings and housing all crowding in. This overruns
the metro plaza. Can’t the district government ever leave anything
alone, ever see what is enough, a nice balance? Stop fixing things that
are not broken. The small area plan has a guiding principal to “preserve
and enhance existing open and park space.” Are we to accept a plan
that plainly contradicts its own guiding principal? This plan has
elements that will fail Brookland, fail the city, fail to improve the
area. We want our councilman and his staff to help this process to
select the parts of the Small Area Plan that benefit the community and
get rid of the obviously destructive parts that leave Brookland crowded,
trees destroyed, and a special, irreplaceable grove and common green
space destroyed.
###############
It’s Time to Get Ready for Oversight and
Budget Hearings
Susie Cambria, susie.cambria@gmail.com
The city council’s budget office just released their schedule of
hearings for the FYs 2008 and 2009 performance oversight hearings and FY
2010 budget hearings. One of the earliest of these hearings is one
announced yesterday by Council chairman Vincent Gray about the use of
the federal stimulus; that hearing is on February 11.
It is important for all who are concerned about public policies and
services to weigh in with the city council and Mayor Fenty. So check out
the schedules at http://susiecambria.blogspot.com,
a free source of child- and youth-related information.
###############
Cheh’s Restaurant Hygiene Act
Paul D. Craney, pcraney@dcgop.com
On February 3, DC Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), introduced a
bill to change the city’s health inspection system so restaurants
would receive letter grades on their compliance with food safety and
health requirements. Local businesses would have to post their A, B, C,
or worse in their front windows or menus. The DC Republican Committee
made the following statement in response to Cheh’s proposal. “Cheh’s
legislation gets a F. Her legislation is like when a teacher has a pop
quiz. but the only difference is that the pop quiz would be your grade
for the year. Her legislation would grade a restaurant’s single day
health standards and ignore the remaining 364 days of the year. How can
Cheh think giving so much power to only a few DC Food Safety Inspectors
is a good thing? Haven’t we learned from Harriet Walters that giving
so much power to a few leads to corruption?”
The DC Republican Committee opposes Cheh’s “Restaurant Hygiene
Act of 2009” and would rather have the current law revised so the
public does not need to file a Freedom of Information Act to obtain
reports of restaurant inspections. The DC council should act quickly to
upload these reports online, along with every DC government financial
transaction, for the public to view.
###############
Further Insult to DCPS and Students
Qawi Robinson, qrobinso@lycos.com
I know this is a late response but I read the article found in The
New Republic that was written by Joel Klein (Rhee’s mentor) and
Reverend Al Sharpton (http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7a99bd1c-903a-4f47-a2ee-9e4838975b05).
In reading it, I saw the merits, but I am insulted that such fodder,
interwoven with President Obama’s desire for educational reform, is
being passed off as fact. Not since the Twana Brawley case have I seen
such misuse of Reverend Sharpton’s influence. Yes, schools need
competent and stellar teachers. Schools also need the support of an
administration that won’t marginalize them in the process of getting
better. It is amazing that the Educational Research eggheads can put
together actuarial tables and calculate this and that to determine their
return of investment on DC Public School students. It is great to know
that folks can forecast and estimate future levels of funding and
competency for students. However, what are you gonna do for the kids
now?
Planning and forecasting for the future is “sounding brass and
tingling cymbal” if it does not incorporate the dynamics of now! DC’s
achievement ranking is not solely DCPS’ fault. There is enough blame
to go around for DCPS, DC government, parents, and students. And before
we start claiming the panacea is chartered schools and reform, we really
have to look at how each component, DCPS-government-parents-students,
plays its part in excellence being deferred. The best, most innovative
and stellar teacher in the world cannot make a student learn. A student
must show initiative in order to learn. Likewise, the student with the
most initiative is going to be inhibited in the learning process if the
teacher is inhibited in basic resources like paper and books. A new
school building won’t fix that. A new charter school’s siphoning the
monies from an already impotent budget won’t do that either. And
definitely Joel Klein, Al Sharpton, and Adrian Fenty, who don’t have
their kids enrolled in DCPS (and never will) and continue to speak from
the sidelines won’t fix that either. As raising a learned child is a
collaborative effort, so is the solution. Dictatorships and armchair
superintendenting (I know it’s not a word) won’t do. More
collaboration with those in government, parents, and teachers, will be
the only way that test scores and education (note the difference) will
improve. DCPS was great some thirty to forty years ago. It will be great
again, if the wrong people’s hands are taken from the reins.
###############
Three Fifths . . . Not Hardly
Qawi Robinson, qrobinso@lycos.com
Thanks for your Constitutional explanation of the three-fifths clause
[themail, February 1]. While what you said has merit, do you sincerely
think that the slave states weren’t hedging their bets on the
fractional equivalent of the others. If you were a Representative with a
state that had 100,000 slaves and I was a Representative with one
million, I still would have the greater advantage and influence, along
with the legal right to oppress ten times more people than you. The
legacy of slavery is just that . . . a legacy, meaning the remnants or
leftover parts of history are still being felt today. Even in the nation’s
capital, it is amazing that as much as DC is considered the center of
Democracy, their own citizens don’t have full voting rights. Our
citizens, coincidentally more than sixty percent African-American, are
being treated like three fifths by the Congress. Fifty years ago, we
weren’t even allowed to vote for President in DC. One hundred fifty to
two hundred years ago, the three fifths were building the Capitol, White
House, and other places around this nation’s capital. If anything, DC
was supposed to be a model for the country. Unfortunately, DC represents
all the negative things to model. Infant mortality, cancer, crime,
income gap, property ownership, etc. If you want to talk about the
disenfranchised and three fifths, don’t sugarcoat it in a mask of
Constitutional rhetoric. Expose the injustices (like themail has been
doing), and tell the truth about the intent of government as it applies
to voting.
###############
Thank you, Gary, for noting that ever-so-widespread misunderstanding
of the three-fifths clause. It was the slave owners who wanted slaves to
count fully, not out of respect for their slaves, whom they considered
mere property, but to increase the power of the slave states in
Congress. I calculate that the three-fifths clause gave the slave states
an additional twenty-one votes in the House of Representatives in 1860.
Plainly those additional twenty-one representatives were representing
the interests of the slave owners, not the slaves.
People in ante-bellum America understood the significance of the
three-fifths clause, and opponents of slavery argued that slaves should
not count at all. This was no disrespect to the slaves, but recognized
that counting slaves in the census served only to strengthen slavery. It
is bizarre today to hear people take, unwittingly, the side of slave
owners, when they denounce the three-fifths clause as a devaluation of
African Americans.
###############
Just a note to you to explain why I used the three-fifths analogy.
Since the Declaration of Independence stated, in part, “that all men
are created equal,” the Continental Congress should not have abandoned
that principle for the sake of political expediency or consolidation of
power. Would that have resulted in the South having more representation?
Yes. However, I believe that a principled stand will always, in the
long-run, overcome a political compromise. Likewise, DC voting rights
advocates are screaming for voting representation in Congress and
demanding to be treated like the citizens of the fifty states. How then
can they abandon that principle for the sake of political expediency and
settle for one vote in the House of Representatives? Delegate Norton on
Sunday admitted defeat would come in any attempt for District citizens
to gain voting representation in the Senate. So what? Go for it anyway.
We have all heard the phrase “why buy the cow when you can get the
milk for free.” Well, why should the power brokers in the nation’s
capitol treat us fairly if we can be bought off with one measly vote?
Remember these words: “power concedes nothing without a demand.”
###############
Thanks for the clarification. It is interesting to note that, in late
eighteenth century contracts, the value of a slave’s labor was
generally set at three-fifths of that of a free laborer. I have assumed
for some time that this, or some such commercial evaluation, was the
basis for the constitutionally set proportion.
###############
CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
DC Statehood, Now Is The Time!, February 5
Scott McLarty, scottmclarty@hotmail.com
The DC Statehood Green Party (http://www.dcstatehoodgreen.org)
is sponsoring a forum, with a panel and open discussion, on the growing
demand for statehood for the District of Columbia on Thursday, February
5. The forum, titled “DC Statehood, Now Is The Time!,” begins at
7:00 p.m. and will take place at the University of the District of
Columbia School of Law, 4200 Connecticut Avenue, NW, in Building 39,
Room 201 (near the Van Ness Metro Station on the Red Line). Food and
refreshments will be provided; musical entertainment will include Rasi
Caprice performing his HipHop hit “Statehood.” The forum will
feature an array of guest speakers. On the confirmed guest speaker list:
WTOP radio host Mark Plotkin, DC Senator Michael Brown, DC Senator Paul
Strauss, Councilmembers Harry Thomas and Michael Brown, journalist and
longtime statehood advocate Sam Smith, and other DC statehood leaders.
The DC Statehood Green Party, which holds major party status in
Washington, DC, has led the political movement for DC statehood since
the party was founded as the DC Statehood Party in 1970. The party calls
the District’s lack of self-government and voting representation part
of the unfinished business of the civil rights struggle, and has
challenged President Obama and Congress to enact DC statehood. The DC
Statehood Green Party has not supported ‘DC voting rights’
legislation granting the District a single voting seat in the US House,
because of the plan’s lack of constitutionality and because the DC
voting rights will not change the District’s status or end Congress’s
power over District laws, policies, and budgets. Statehood Greens have
argued that DC statehood can be achieved without passage of a
constitutional amendment. Here are a couple of articles for those
interested in further reading about the demand for DC statehood: “Something
Rotten in Appleseed” by Sam Smith, The Progressive Review (DC City
Desk), January 29 (http://prorev.com/2009/01/something-rotten-in-appleseed.htm);
“Free DC! The Obama Inauguration and a New Chance for Democracy in Our
Nation’s Capital” by Scott McLarty, OpEdNews.com, January 17 (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Free-DC--The-Obama-Inaugu-by-Scott-McLarty-090115-146.html).
###############
National Building Museum Events, February 9
Jazmine Zick, jzick@nbm.org
February 9, 12:30-1:30 p.m., Smart Growth: Enterprise’s Green
Communities Program. Dana Bourland, senior director of Green Communities
for Enterprise Community Partners, presents the organization’s
national initiative to bring the economic, environmental, and health
benefits of green building to affordable housing. Free. No registration
required. At the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary
Square stop, Metro Red Line.
###############
Faith in Politics: Is It Time for Progressives
to Get Religion?, February 26
John Campbell, jcampbell@geofinity.com
The Washington Ethical Society will hold a debate between on Faith in
Politics between Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Jamie Raskin on Thursday,
February 26, at 7:15 p.m., at the Washington Ethical Society, 7750 16th
Street, NW. Cost, $15 for general audiences. You must RSVP and arrive by
7:00 p.m. Please RSVP no later than Tuesday, February 24, to wes.rsvp@gmail.com.
Free for college students who present a current college ID.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown
University, former Maryland Lieutenant Governor, and the oldest child of
the late Robert F. Kennedy. She is the author of Failing America’s
Faithful: How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing
Their Way. Jamie Raskin is a Maryland State Senator representing
Silver Spring and Takoma Park. A professor of constitutional law at
American University’s Washington College of Law, he is the winner of
the American Humanist Association’s 2008 Distinguished Service Award
and author of We the Students: Supreme Court Cases for and about America’s
Students.
The Spark! Speaker Series continues with its series of presenting
provocative themes and longstanding social issues in a civil and
respectful forum. This event explores church and state issues and the
tension between religious and secular approaches. Previous topics have
included immigration policy, Iranian engagement, and community
integration. For more information about the event, contact Patti Absher:
pjabsher@starpower.net or
237-5220.
###############
CLASSIFIEDS — GRANTS
Grants for Nonprofits Available from DC Rotary
Club
Elena Tscherny, grants@dcrotary.org
If you need small funds to provide needed services through your
nonprofit organization, visit the web site of the Rotary Club of
Washington, DC, dcrotary.org, and download the community service grant
information sheet and the application form. The grants are provided by
the Rotary Foundation of Washington, DC. The Rotary Foundation of
Washington was established in 1922 as an incorporated, not-for-profit
organization to engage in works of charity. The Foundation collects,
holds, and administers funds to carry out this function.
The Rotary Club of Washington, DC, Community Service Grants Committee
reviews applications for funding requests and makes recommendations for
approval to the Foundation’s board, which has final authority for
approval. Money is awarded to projects that demonstrate need for small
capital items or seed money for special services that provide direct and
tangible benefits principally within the District of Columbia.
Applications and required attachments must be received no later than
4:00 p.m., February 13. If you require further information, please
contact Elena Tscherny at 727-1183 or by E-mail at grants@dcrotary.org.
###############
themail@dcwatch is an E-mail discussion forum that is published every
Wednesday and Sunday. To change the E-mail address for your subscription
to themail, use the Update Profile/Email address link below in the
E-mail edition. To unsubscribe, use the Safe Unsubscribe link in the
E-mail edition. An archive of all past issues is available at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail.
All postings should 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.
