Bad Behavior
Dear Behaviorists:
Several stories in the past week, even the good news stories,
converge to one conclusion: we’re surrounded by people who just
misbehave. The park at the corner of Girard and 14th Streets, NW,
reopened this weekend, to great fanfare. The mayor came to the official
opening, and dozens of Summer Youth Job Program students were paid for
the day to attend the ceremony and provide an enthusiastic audience for
the Office of Cable Television cameras. It’s a small pocket park,
large enough to accommodate only a basketball court and a seating area.
After several months of renovation and a budget of about $1.6 million
dollars, the basketball court has been resurfaced, a few plants and new
trees have been planted in the seating area, and two small restrooms
have been built. My bet is that the restrooms will be permanently closed
and locked before the summer is over, and we’ll never find out how the
city managed to spend so much money to so little effect.
The Washington City Paper cover story on the latest Marion
Barry scandal managed to make Barry look good by comparison by putting
an unnecessary vulgarism on its cover. The City Paper acted like
the two-year-old who has just learned that certain words drive adults
crazy, so he therefore screams them repeatedly at the top of his lungs.
A certain maturity was lacking. But the City Paper made up for
that lapse by a Mike DeBonis story, scheduled for next week’s paper,
that carries the Barry story into new and uncharted territory: “Barry
Involved in Suspect Nonprofit Dealings: DC Council Sent $450,000 to
Nonexistent Organizations,” http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=37537.
In fact, DeBonis writes, if you count the earmarks in the city budget
for FY2009 and FY2010, the total amount spent on these Barry groups
nears a million dollars. The city council’s investigation called for
by Chairman Gray has been carefully proscribed and limited to Barry’s
contracts with Ms. Watts-Brightwood. That doesn’t begin to address the
real problem, but then it wasn’t intended to, was it?
Give credit where credit is due; the Washington Post’s salon
scandal, which I made fun of in the last issue of themail, may have
initially engendered only a halfhearted apology from the publisher, but
today it resulted in an ombudsman article that lets it all hang out: “A
Sponsorship Scandal at the Post,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/11/AR2009071100290.html.
Let the city council learn a few lessons from that. When you’re
embarrassed, shine a light on the problem. Acknowledge it; don’t draw
out an investigation until you hope that people will have forgotten
about it; get to the bottom of what went wrong quickly and don’t try
to limit what you can find; and then broadcast what you found to the
world, so it’s less likely that you’ll repeat your mistake.
Or you can do like Attorney General Peter Nickles and Police Chief
Cathy Lanier, and try to deny your mistakes, even when they were
apparent to everyone else months ago. On Friday, the Court of Appeals
issued a decision overturning the lower court, and finding that the
Metropolitan Police Department’s blockades of the Trinidad
neighborhood were transparently and unquestionably unconstitutional, http://www.dcwatch.com/police/nsz090710.htm.
The decision is a thorough spanking of the Attorney General’s attempt
to defend the checkpoints: “The harm to the rights of appellants is
apparent. It cannot be gainsaid that citizens have a right to drive upon
the public streets of the District of Columbia or any other city absent
a constitutionally sound reason for limiting their access. As our
discussion of the likelihood of success has demonstrated, there is no
such constitutionally sound bar in the NSZ checkpoint program. It is
apparent that appellants’ constitutional rights are violated.” But
the citizens of the District can wait forever and still not get an
apology from Peter Nickles for violating their constitutional rights;
instead, he’s making empty threats about appealing to the Supreme
Court. This means he’s learned nothing and is likely to make the same
mistake again. He just won’t do right.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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From President Clinton to Councilmember Barry
Frank Winstead, frank.winstead@gmail.com
In case any juveniles are reading, I will use the Wilson Building
euphemism “getting a 108” (some kind of DC Law reference, I guess)
in lieu of recent City Paper cover crudeness. In the late 1990’s,
President Clinton was investigated and impeached for getting a 108.
Robert S. Bennett was one of the President’s attorneys. In 2009,
Councilmember Marion Barry is being investigated by Bennett. Presumably,
Mr. Bennett has established himself as the nation’s leading legal
authority on 108’s. This investigation was prompted by the bankrupt City
Paper publishing a front page revelation that Councilmember Barry
did not receive a 108. Is not getting a 108 even Twitter-worthy? Where
will this media trend lead? And, where will government investigations
follow? Related breaking news, at this time it is widely believed that
Mary Cheh and some other members of the DC council had no significant
involvement in Councilmember Barry being refused a 108.
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Since the news first broke on July 4 that Marion Barry had been
arrested by the US Park Police for stalking Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, a
former girlfriend and DC government contractor, there has been endless
media coverage in both the local and national press. A Google search on
Sunday evening returned more than twelve hundred news articles about the
stalking incident alone. Moreover, press coverage has turned into a
media circus, with Barry’s press secretary and attorney holding
multiple press conferences in a single day, including one press
conference that Watts-Brighthaupt herself attended in order to respond
to Barry’s characterization of the incident and their relationship.
Indeed, it has been evident that, while he may have been embarrassed by
the incident, and by the sordid details regarding his relationship with
Watts-Brighthaupt, Barry relished being once again in the spotlight and
being the center of a media frenzy.
However, at a time when the local media has severely limited its
coverage of the Wilson Building, both with respect to the mayor and the
city council, why did the initial stalking story warrant such media
attention? Why did the Washington Post assign three senior
reporters to share a byline on the story? Most Wilson Building stories
are relegated to page four or five of the Metro section, facing the
obituaries, so why did this story merit such prominent placement in the
newspaper. Now that the initial stalking story has raised questions
regarding the council’s personnel, contracting, and ethics policies, I
hope that these issues could be thoroughly investigated. Moreover, I
hope that renewed interest in the work of our elected officials at the
Wilson Building will focus attention on a host of issues, such as all
earmarks contained within the 2010 budget, the effort to send a surplus
District ambulance and fire truck to the Dominican republic; personnel
policies of the councilmembers and of the Executive Office of the Mayor;
the council’s effort to purchase certain properties from the Boys and
Girls Clubs of Greater Washington that have very unclear titles and in
fact may already belong to the District government; the failure of
elected officials to report all gifts that they receive, although they
are required to by law; and the use of government employees in election
campaigns. If the latest Barry scandal reawakens press interest in these
subjects, it may yet do some good.
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Slush in July
Ed T. Barron, edtb1@macdotcom
The latest Barry episode is a real travesty for a city councilman. If
the council chairman does not throw Barry off the council, then he
should be thrown off. Turns out that Barry has $600,000 that he can
spend any way he wants. That is a pretty good-sized slush fund. It’s
not hard to believe he could get any number of girlfriends with that
booty (no pun intended). Hey, if Barry’s willing to throw a big piece
of that slush fund my way, I’d even be one of his girlfriends.
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Cheh’s Election Bill Is a Fraud
Paul D. Craney, pcraney@dcgop.com
The District of Columbia Republican Committee is scheduled to testify
on Monday, July 13, against Bill 18-345, the Omnibus Election Reform Act
of 2009 [http://www.dcwatch.com/council18/18-345.htm,
in front of the Chairman Mary Cheh’s Committee on Government
Operations and the Environment.
“Last November the Board of Elections and Ethics mailed absentee
ballots to Republicans that were missing the Republican Council
candidate. The country knew Obama won the presidency, and yet DC
residents couldn’t get a confirmation that Obama took DC. Chair Cheh’s
election bill is riddled with problems instead of solutions. This
proposed bill is the equivalent of giving FEMA more power and
responsibilities after its performance in Hurricane Katrina,” stated
Robert J. Kabel, Chairman of the DC Republican Committee.
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A Great Move
Ed T. Barron, edtb1@macdotcom
The Historical Society has submitted paperwork to make Janney School
a historical landmark. That’s marvelous. A landmark designation for
Janney would make modernization or even making energy saving
improvements (e.g., new windows) very difficult, if not impossible. That
landmark decision would, however, make those who oppose development of a
new library with housing above the library (and using a portion of the
Janney School property) very happy. I can see it now with very clear
vision — a new Tenley Library in 2020.
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K. Pearson calls for expanding benefits to unmarried partners. There
oughta be a law — oh, yes, there is one already. Of course, health
care reform will likely make it unnecessary to keep it up, since one
reason for domestic partnership is the insurance benefits. The existence
of one of the nation’s oldest domestic partnership laws is another
example of why a court will one day determine that the only reason the
arrangement is not called marriage is malice toward gays and lesbians.
This is the logic behind the suit filed by Ted Olsen in California,
where their Civil Union Law has all the benefits of marriage except the
name. The Supreme Court has already held that targeting gays for unequal
treatment just for their orientation is considered malice and not a
rational basis for disparate treatment (this occurred when Colorado had
a constitutional amendment to prohibit anti-discrimination measures that
the SCOTUS overturned). If the California amendment is overturned, look
for gay marriage in DC fairly quickly — especially if the SCOTUS does
not grant certiorari.
[I’m not sure of all the implications of this. If DC adopts a law
legalizing gay marriage, and if there is therefore no reason to have
domestic partnerships, will the council then repeal the domestic
partnership law? If it doesn’t, and if people have the choice of
either a domestic partnership or marriage, what are the implications of
that? Is there an argument for having both domestic partnerships and
marriages, with the same definition and benefits? If domestic
partnerships are rescinded, will couples who choose not to get married
lose the benefits of domestic partnership that they currently have,
unless they get married? Why shouldn’t they? — Gary Imhoff]
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RE: Consider Expanding Benefits of Marriage to
More Groups
Bob Levine, rilevine@cpcug.org
K. West is back [themail, July 8] with a post proposing the expansion
of marriage tax benefits to some unexplained unlimited “other groups.”
I’m not real sure if this person if for or against this expansion or
why it should matter. At one point people in the society thought that
the society would fall apart if the protection of marriage was expanded
to a black person married to a white person. Oh, the horror of such a
thing happening. Now some people are outraged at people of the same sex
getting the protection of being married. Such a nightmare; I’m sure
that western civilization will collapse overnight if it happens. I
really cannot quite understand why people have such an interest in what
other people are doing and why they worry so about how they are allowed
to define their relationships. Most married people I know are busy
enough as is without worrying about how strangers are defining them. I
guess you can declare yourself married to your pet goat for all I care;
just don’t expect me to invite you over as a couple. Baa Humbug.
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Ron Drake writes [themail, July 8] that “Years ago, while Robert
McNamara was on his way by ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, of course
relaxing in the stateroom with the other self-important beautiful
people, a young man, . . . picked McNamara up and threw him overboard.”
This account is at odds with the headline in The Washington Post
of October 11, 1972, “McNamara Bests Angry Youth Trying to Push Him
Off Ferry/ McNamara Foils Assailant.” The McNamara obit in the Vinyard
Gazette of July 7 2009 stated “. . . there was the September night
in 1972 when he fended off an irate Vinyarder who tried to throw him
overboard from the ferry Islander, losing his trademark wire-rimmed
glasses in the scuffle.” The obit opined that “the scuffle may have
had more to do with Mr. McNamara’s attempt to close off the [local
artist’s] access to [McNamara’s private] Chilmark beach.” The “stateroom”
was described as the ferry lunchroom.
A little less hyperbole, please.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Department of Parks and Recreation Events,
July 14-16
John Stokes, john.astokes@dc.gov
July 14, 7:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m., Guy Mason Recreation Center, 3600
Calvert Street, NW. Congressional Softball Game for ages eighteen and
up. This softball game consists of all female Members of Congress
against lobbyists to compete for bragging rights. For more information,
call Robert Haldeman at 671-1700.
July 15, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., Verizon Center, 601 F Street, NW. Camp
Day for ages six to thirteen. Camp Day is when the Washington Mystics
offers a discount package to summer camps throughout the metro area to
see a Mystics game. The discount price includes a game ticket, a hot-dog
and a beverage, or a lesser fee for just a game ticket. This season’s
game is the Washington Mystics vs. San Antonio Silver Stars. For more
information, call CM Anderson, 282-0380.
July 16, 5:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m., Benning Park Community Center, Southern
Avenue and Fable Street, SE. Ward 7 and 8 Ping Pong Tournament for ages
seventeen and under. Ping Pong tournament for youths seventeen and under
and twelve and under. Come show off your skills! For more information,
call Sean Tuohey at 361-9432.
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Humanities Council Grants Workshops, July 16
Lisa Alfred, lalfred@wdchumanities.org
Grants Workshop, Thursday, July 16, 12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m.., Anacostia
Community Museum, 1901 Fort Place, SE, near the W2 and W3 bus lines. The
Humanities Council of Washington, DC, presents a workshop to assist
nonprofit organizations in planning projects and seeking up to $5,000
for programs that celebrate and document the cultural life of
Washington, DC. Free. Please RSVP at http://www.wdchumanities.org
or call 387-8391.
Grants Workshop, Thursday, July 16, 6:00 p.m.-7:30 p.m., at Cleveland
Park Library, 3310 Connecticut Avenue, NW, near Cleveland Park Metro.
The Humanities Council of Washington, DC, presents a workshop to assist
nonprofit organizations in planning projects and seeking up to $5,000
for programs that celebrate and document the cultural life of
Washington, DC. Free. Please RSVP at http://www.wdchumanities.org
or call 387-8391.
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Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, at the Avalon, July
17, 19-20
Sarah Pokempner, azepo@aol.com
The Avalon Theater will be hosting the DC-area release of local
filmmaker Aviva Kempner’s new film, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, beginning
July 17 for a theatrical engagement. Check our web site for show times.
In addition, we have various opportunities coming up to meet and chat
with Ms. Kempner herself.
On Sunday, July 19, a 9:30 a.m. breakfast reception at the Avalon
Theater Cafe will be followed by an 11:00 a.m. screening of the film in
Avalon 1. Join us for a question and answer discussion with director
Aviva Kempner and Gertrude Berg’s grandson, Adam Berg, moderated by
author Dan Raviv (CBS News correspondent, CBS Weekend Roundup). Tickets,
which may be purchased at the door or through our web site, are $50.00
to the reception and screening, or $15.00 to the screening only. All
proceeds will benefit the Avalon Legacy Campaign and Ms. Kempner’s
Ciesla Foundation.
On Monday, July 20, the Avalon’s 8:00 p.m. screening of the film
will be followed by a question and answer panel featuring director Aviva
Kempner; Judith E. Herbet, editor; Skip SoRelle, MPSE, sound
editor/mixer; and Margaret Sclafani, post-production coordinator.
Regular admission tickets are $10.50 and may be purchased at the door or
through our web site. For more information, please visit http://www.theavalon.org
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Ward 6 Republicans, July 21
Paul D. Craney, pauldcraney@yahoo.com
There will be a Ward 6 Republican Club meeting on Tuesday, July 21,
at 6:30 p.m., at the Old Naval Hospital at 921 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE.
The meeting will be on Charter Schools, and the speaker is Mike Peabody,
founder of FOCUS (Friends of Choice in Urban Schools).
The Ward 6 Republican Chair is Gary Teal; he may be reached at
365-9437 or gary.teal@gmail.com;
please RSVP to Gary. Light food and refreshments will be served. Anyone
interested in attending is welcome to come.
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