Walled Off Washington
Dear Washingtonians:
The current online issue of The National Journal has a pointed
article by Yochi Dreazen on “Walled Off Washington,” http://tinyurl.com/4czad6y.
Dreazen chronicles how Washington has been turned into a garrison state,
with formerly public buildings and the public streets around them being
walled off from the city’s residents and the citizens of the United
States, and asks, “But Washington’s decades-long habit of reacting
to horrific attacks by installing costly new security measures raises a
difficult question about the future of American democracy: how free can
a society be when its elected officials are kept further and further
away from those they represent?” Dreazen writes how the shooting of
Representative Gabrielle Giffords has given rise to calls for even
stricter security measures to protect elected officials from close
contact with members of the public, “Political leaders who have
security details quickly discover that they are an effective way of
limiting their exposure to the media and preventing journalists from
getting close enough to freely question them.”
This would be a good time for our city’s local elected officials to
speak out on behalf of Washington as an open city — and, by extension,
of the United States as an open society — but local officials seem to
be interested, instead, in increasing their own security details and
detachment from the people, and don’t seem to be objecting to any
measures to lock down our city. Mayor Gray, for example, has increased
the size of his security detail back to the highest level it reached
under Mayor Barry, after both Mayors Williams and Fenty decreased it. He
has also moved the mayor’s office back to the sixth floor of the
Wilson Building, saying that he wants to make the office welcoming to
visitors — except that the whole sixth floor is off limits to
uninvited visitors, who are forbidden access by armed security guards.
The only hopeful statement has come from Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton,
who deserves praise for saying, “I don’t take this one event to mean
that 440 of us are in trouble. And if we do, we need to get into another
line of work,” http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/politics/DC-Vigil-Held-for-Rep-Giffords--113158989.html.
#####
Freeman Klopott notes the discordance between Mayor Gray’s rhetoric
and his actual practice, http://tinyurl.com/4cpg7vy:
“DC Mayor Vince Gray invited the press to the first meeting of his
full cabinet Monday afternoon, handed out a copy of his open government
memo and then kicked reporters out.”
#####
US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “said Monday that he hopes
interim DC Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson stays in the position ‘for
the long haul,’ endorsing her strongly while Mayor Vincent C. Gray
deliberates on his permanent choice for a new schools leader. Duncan’s
praise of Henderson, in an interview with The Washington Post,
injected the Obama administration into one of the new mayor’s most
critical appointments,” http://tinyurl.com/4alxf68
Maybe I’ve misunderstood the politics of home rule. Aren’t we
supposed to be highly offended if any federal official injects himself
into the local decisions of this city? Aren’t we supposed to protest
some fed’s telling DC government what policy it should pursue or whom
it should appoint to its own positions? So where’s the outrage at
Duncan’s presumption? Where are the outspoken press releases from
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and DC Vote telling Duncan to butt out of
DC’s business? Where are the speeches by city government officials
saying that the decision of whom to appoint as chancellor is our
business, and not the federal government’s? Where is the Washington
Post’s editorial saying that the federal government would never
tell any state whom it should appoint to its state positions, and
shouldn’t treat the DC government with such contempt? Or is this
so-called bedrock “principle” of federal noninterference merely
empty rhetoric and a cover for partisanship? Does it just mean that
Republicans should keep their hands off, while Democrats are welcome to
dictate policy and personnel to DC? The Post’s actual editorial
on Monday, http://tinyurl.com/4q7fc6q,
didn’t chide Duncan for his presumption, but praised him for his “welcome
words on DC school reform.” It called his stance “refreshing.” It
excused his obvious direction to Mr. Gray as not being an attempt to “micromanage.”
Does anyone think that if a Republican federal official, say John Kline,
the new Republican Chairman of the House Committee on Education and the
Workforce, were to name whom Mayor Gray should appoint as Chancellor of
DC public schools, that DC Vote, Mayor Gray, Delegate Norton, and the Post
would thank him graciously for his welcome suggestion? Why should DC
citizens take home rule rhetoric seriously, when the people who preach
it most vociferously don’t take it seriously themselves? Hypocrisy
rules.
#####
In the last issue of themail, I speculated about whether Sekou Biddle
could win the special election to keep the at-large councilmember’s
seat that he won at the Democratic State Committee’s election last
week. I wrote that, “Biddle wasn’t well known to the members of the
DSC before this election, and he still isn’t known to members of the
voting public. There’ll be several other Democrats on the ballot,
including most likely Vincent Orange himself. A Democrat who hasn’t
even announced yet, but who has money and a small corps of energetic
campaign workers, can enter the race late and sweep all the chips off
the table. Besides, the ballot in the special election won’t have
party identification labels to guide yellow-dog Democrats away from the
shunned Republican party. DeBonis suggests that Patrick Mara, who
defeated Carol Schwartz in a Republican primary race, may run. A more
likely scenario is that Schwartz herself could win the special election
if she decided to run. With her name recognition and popularity among
many Democrats, she’d do better than Mara. She would certainly give
Biddle a hard time.” Bruce DePuyt, of NewsChannel 8, enterprisingly
called Schwartz in West Palm Beach, where she is wintering. She said
that she wasn’t interested in spending her winter back in DC to run,
although she sounded as though she agreed that she’d do well in the
election if she were to run, http://tinyurl.com/4qvgyd5.
I thought what I wrote about Schwartz was clearly my speculation about
how she would fare if she ran, and not an announcement that she was
running, but apparently I wasn’t clear enough for everybody. Elyssa
Silverman, of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, used Carol’s statement
that she wasn’t running as an occasion to attack not merely me, but
also Dorothy, who didn’t write the piece. Elyssa Twittered that, “Hope
this will also end people relying on Gary and Dorothy for political
insight.” Ohh, where did that snark come from?
#####
William Lockridge, the Ward 8 member of the State Board of Education,
died this evening in George Washington University Hospital, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/debonis/2011/01/william_lockridge_dc_school_bo.html
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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On Wednesday, January 19, Mary Cheh’s Government Operations
Committee will hold a hearing on a proposal by Rokey Suleman, executive
director of the DC Board of Elections and Ethics, to change voting
procedures for the April 26 special election to fill Kwame Brown’s
at-large council seat. The hearing will focus on a letter and memorandum
Suleman sent to Cheh on January 7, concerning the cost of holding the
special election (http://www.dcboee.org/popup.asp?url=/pdf_files/nr_673.pdf).
Under current District law, voting in the special election would take
place at the usual 143 polling sites throughout the District. The
estimated cost, according to Suleman, will be $829,000. As a
cost-cutting alternative, Suleman recommends that voting take place at
just sixteen voting centers (two in each ward) over a three-day period
on April 23, 25, and 26. He estimates the cost of this alternative at
$624,000).
While it is useful to have a public discussion on measures to cut the
cost of the special election, given the District’s fiscal constraints,
a larger issue must be addressed first. Under District law, it is the DC
Board of Elections and Ethics that sets policy regarding the conduct of
District elections, not the city council, Mary Cheh, or Rokey Suleman,
who is an employee of the Board and not legally empowered to make policy
on its behalf. How could Suleman, an employee of the BOEE, send the
January 7 memo to Cheh when the Board never held a public hearing,
meeting, discussion, or vote — as required by law — on such a
substantial change in the District’s election procedures. Moreover, as
Chairman of the Council’s Government Operations Committee, Cheh is
supposed to provide legislative oversight of the BOEE, not supplant the
role and authority of the Board.
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A longstanding dispute (approaching three years) with the Department
of Motor Vehicles over a parking ticket has been complicated by a
bizarre characteristic of DC parking tickets: it’s commonly impossible
to tell exactly what violation is being charged. Parking tickets don’t
specify the Municipal Regulation that has been, according to the
ticketing officer, violated. The officer notes instead a three-digit
code, and those codes are supposed to correlate to specific Municipal
Regulations. You and the ticketing officer are supposed somehow to know
which one.
P055, “No Parking Anytime,” seems to be a favorite code cited by
both DPW Parking Enforcement officers and the MPD. I’ve accumulated
eight such tickets, and constituents have shown me more. P055 is popular
because the ticketing officer doesn’t have to specify why parking was
prohibited “anytime” at that location. It just was, the officer says
so. How is one supposed to muster a defense against such a vague charge?
In the case of my ongoing ticket dispute with the DMV, it’s clear that
the Traffic Adjudication Appeals Board, assessing (and upholding) the
ticket, doesn’t know what violation is being charged, nor what
Municipal Regulation is applicable. Everybody’s just guessing, because
the ticket doesn’t say.
Well, it turns out that there exists a secret decoder ring that
allows one to correlate these three-digit codes with actual parking
regulations. But good luck finding it. Only in response to a Mount
Pleasant ANC resolution calling on the MPD, and DPW, to specify on
parking tickets the actual regulation violated, did the MPD provide me
with the decoder document, rather opaquely designated Circular 07-04,
“Civil Infractions for Moving, Parking, and Hack Violations”. There
one can discover that P055 is not the blanket, all-purpose “no parking
anytime” that officers like to think it is. On the contrary, this code
corresponds specifically and exclusively to 18 DCMR 4019.1. Well, that’s
easily found on-line, and turns out to ban parking on three specific
locations in the District, namely parts of Woodley Road NW, Okie Street
NE, and Branch Avenue, SE. That’s it. Nowhere else in the District.
Hence, no parking ticket specifying P055, if it is written for cars
parked anywhere but at the three locations cited in this municipal
regulation, is legally valid. It doesn’t matter what parking
regulation your parked car may actually have violated. If you weren’t
at any of those three locations, then it wasn’t a P055 violation, and
any ticket specifying that code is invalid. The appropriate statement
for denying the ticket is this: “The stipulated facts on the ticket
are inconsistent [with] or do not support the violation.”
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It Is Time for the Biddle Hate to Stop
Eric J. Jones, ejjones.threed@gmail.com
I must first say as the Executive Vice President of the DC Young
Democrats (the first group to endorse someone in this process) I find it
not only upsetting but also insulting to say that we as members of the
DC Democratic State Committee only voted because we were intimidated or
coerced to do so by our locally elected officials. First off this is not
true at all. Just like in times past during any important vote before
the State Committee some members received calls, E-mails, letters and
cards on behalf of the candidates for the position. While some may have
received personal calls, E-mails or were talked to by elected officials
many of us received nothing at all. The fact of the matter is that the
Honorable Vincent B. Orange was not selected by a group of his peers who
is selected by the registered Democrats in this city to be their local
leadership and voice. This was the announced process and it is what was
carried out.
Instead of trying to paint some picture of scared state committee
members voting on a man they knew nothing about because they were
fearful of retribution folks should instead seek the truth. In a race in
which most if not all knew that there was no sure way of knowing how
someone voted unless you watched them fill out their ballot, there was
no true way to hold someone who voted for or against a certain candidate
accountable so this in and of its self is a flat out lie. Secondly, the
fact that Mr. Orange started his speech by apologizing for his previous
campaign tactics and strategies actually highlights something that it
seemed many in this city have failed to realize. Mr. Orange and his
campaign team upset many in this city including many who hold votes on
the DCDSC. It was these same individuals who were then tasked with
selecting someone who they feel best represents not only the interest of
the party but someone they can believe in. It is in this light that Mr.
Biddle was elected Thursday night. While it was great to have our
elected officials in the room, they did not have a positive or negative
impact on many in the room as only half of the groups truly caucused
together and honestly those individuals still did not have that great of
a swing in the vote. From the first ballot to the third, Mr. Biddle
picked up five or six votes which is just part of the number of votes
which were open after Mr. Mays name was removed from the ballot.
Instead of attacking Mr. Biddle for having the audacity to run along
with the other candidates who braved the process or those DCDSC members
who voted for or against any particular candidate I would instead
challenge that we all began the process of trying to repair the
relationships of our city. I think that it took balls for Mr. Orange to
stand up and apologize the way he did and hope that we would all take a
lesson from him in that stand point and decide to move our city forward.
Currently, we are truly facing tough economic times which have lead
to increased unemployment, increased crime, increased homelessness and
true separation of the values that once held this great city together.
In these times we all need to find a common bond to come together on
which should be the betterment of our city. No matter who you hoped the
State Committee selected in its appointment process or who you wish to
support in the upcoming special election of those who so far have
announced their interest:
The important things are that 1) we all come out and exercise our
voice and vote in April during the special election, 2) that we give our
mayor and city council members (no matter whom you supported) our help
and support as all of our futures depend on it.
[This message was originally sent to the Google Groups “DC
Democrats” group and copied to themail — Gary Imhoff]
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One point that comments on the estate tax seem to miss is that the
estate tax is virtually a voluntary tax. Estate taxes can be entirely
avoided, but at a cost to both the testator and to society. An avoidance
strategy (perfectly legal) used by business owners is to purchase large,
single-payment life insurance policies using money borrowed against
their estates. This reduces the net value of the estate, and the
insurance proceeds are not taxable.
It is also very difficult to prevent people from giving away their
money while they are alive without having to pay gift taxes, using
trusts or stock transactions. The really rich pay little in estate
taxes, and certainly not the confiscatory levels that are, in principle,
levied in many parts of the world. So, although in theory the very rich
are the targets of excessively burdensome tax rates, in fact, it is the
moderately well-off who will bear the brunt of these taxes or of the
expense and disruption of avoiding them.
In the case of the District, legislators should consider not only the
incentive to leave the city, but the disincentive that excessive
taxation gives to those who might otherwise locate within the city. High
estate taxes give business owners an incentive to liquidate productive
assets so as to protect from taxation. It is well and good to ask those
more fortunate to help the less fortunate. It is something else to kill
the goose that lays the golden eggs.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Judith Viorst, Unexpectedly Eighty,
January 18
Tonya Butler-Truesdale, gotonyago@gmail.com
Judith Viorst, Unexpectedly Eighty: And Other Adaptations, a luncheon
at the Woman’s National Democratic Club, 1526 New Hampshire Avenue,
NW, at 11:30 a.m., Tuesday, January 18. Judith Viorst was born and
raised in New Jersey. She received a BA in history from Rutgers
University, and in 1981, after six years of study, she graduated from
the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. Many of her books, for adults
as well as for children, have been published abroad. Several of her
children’s books have been made into short films. Mrs. Viorst lectures
widely on a variety of topics, ranging from loss and growth to children’s
literature and the subject of control. Members $25, nonmembers $30,
lecture only (no lunch) $10. Register at https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5880/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=20970
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