Slick and Secretive
Dear Correspondents:
“[Overheard] at a liquor store on Georgia Avenue: middle-aged man
to attendant: ‘Can you get me one of those big bottles of Chivas?’
Attendant: ‘Sure man, you got a party or something?’ Man: ‘No man,
I’m like Kwame, I’m gonna get fully loaded.’” http://dcist.com/2011/02/overheard_in_dc_02252011.php
Wait, wait, there’s more. If you didn’t read Colbert King’s column
yesterday, in which he portrayed the city council as squabbling grade
schoolers, read it now and get ready to fall off your chairs laughing, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022505877.html
For the past two days, Dorothy and I have been starting every
conversation with, “Teacher, teacher.” Politicians can recover from
nearly every error in judgment, but how do they come back from becoming
a joke?
Three ways. First, modesty. They recognize that they’re not the big
shots they thought they were and that people are on to them. They scale
back their inflated egos and their inflated dreams of power and
position. They recognize that they’re not such hot stuff that they
need hot rides, salaries at the top of the national pay scale for city
and state legislatures, staffs bigger than congressional staffs, and
administrators paid better than their equivalents in the federal
government. When they call for sacrifice in tough times, they don’t
just issue that call to taxpayers, but they share in that sacrifice
themselves — in fact, they lead in sacrifice. They realize that they’re
no greater experts in life or living than the rest of us, and so they
refrain from writing laws imposing their personal preferences on us.
They act as careful guardians of our city’s land and property and our
citizens’ resources, rather than as dispensers and disposers of them.
In other words, they behave differently from the way they have behaved
in the past.
Second, maturity. Vincent Gray was elected mayor because he embodied
the hopes of the majority of this city for adult leadership after years
of immaturity, callowness, and greenness. It’s time for him to rise
above the idea that we can build a great city by building up its
politicians and bureaucracy. We can only build a great city by building
up its people.
Third, openness. What have councilmembers and the mayor learned from
the past week? I’m afraid they’re learned exactly the wrong lesson:
don’t trust the press, and keep reporters at a distance so they can’t
learn anything we don’t want them to know. What they should learn,
instead, is to bring the press and the people even closer, and to let
them — us — in. If politicians didn’t try to be slick and
secretive, to get away with the stuff they knew we would question if we
became aware of it, they wouldn’t make themselves into the brunt of
our jokes.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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What does it tell you when people in power repeat the same patterns
of their predecessors, even after having criticized them for the same
things during the election year? What do you see when you take a look at
Mayors Gray and Fenty especially regarding choices made surrounding the
Hardy Middle School debacle?
After hearing public testimony from Hardy students (and other Hardy
stakeholders), then-Chairman Gray wrote in a February 5, 2010, letter to
then-Mayor Fenty: “I encourage you to meet with these young people as
soon as possible to listen to their views because clearly they will be
most affected by your administrations’ decision to remove Mr. Pope
from Hardy. They deserve to have their opinions heard and to get an
explanation of this decision directly from you. After hearing from them,
I have no doubt you will come to the same conclusion I have — the
school’s current leadership represents the best of the District of
Columbia Public Schools and should continue in its current state.”
Now that he’s in office with ultimate oversight over DCPS, Mayor
Gray has been just as silent as Mr. Fenty was on the subject of Hardy’s
leadership and listening to the concerns of Hardy students and teachers
most affected by the Chancellor’s choices. In addition, he says he
should not “micromanage” DC schools — a refrain duplicated by
Sekou Biddle last week at an At-Large candidates forum. This excuse for
the mayor not to get involved is a cop-out, and I have communicated this
to both of them. In the District’s educational structure, without a
true school board, citizens have no other recourse than to go to the
mayor’s office to voice outrage about policy blunders. A bad decision
by the Chancellor then is still a bad one today. Yet this decision,
lacking intellectual honesty and integrity, is permitted to cast a dark
shadow over the Hardy community as if the intent all along was to make a
bad situation worse.
Just like he stated in his letter, Mayor Gray needs to stand up and
explain the choices his team has made pertaining to Hardy. Is this a
case of Mayor Gray believing he operates above the same standard of
accountability to which he held Mayor Fenty? Perhaps Mayor Gray is
really a clone of Mayor Fenty — determined to repeat the same mistakes
that landed the former mayor out of office. If so, he seems to be off to
a good start by demonstrating the same tone deafness to the students,
teachers, and parents of District schools. What a waste of political
goodwill and support from thousands of voters!
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Controlling the Metropolitan Police Department
Bryce A. Suderow, streetstories@juno.com
Kristopher Baumann, head of DC’s Fraternal Order of Police, is
calling for the Feds to control his department, http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2011/02/dc-cops-union-boss-wants-fed-control-department
Do I believe him? No, I do not. Why?
In 1997, when Sandy McCall ran against Sharon Ambrose for the Ward 6
council seat, he argued that the District was too corrupt and
inefficient to fight crime effectively. The head of the police union,
Ron Robertson, supported the platform, but only till the District gave
the union what they wanted. Then the FOP jumped ship and a major plank
of McCall’s campaign was thus removed. Ambrose defeated McCall
handily. Baumann is playing the same game and ought to be confronted
with the truth.
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[Re: Fully Loaded Government, themail, February 23] What you write is
not true. When others the raised of Verizon tickets, I asked for tickets
for this event. There was no emotional reaction. It was a simple
request. I don’t know why you feel the need to embellish this. Please
correct this.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
National Building Museum Events, March 3
Tara Miller, tmiller@nbm.org
The Building Toy: Playing with Structure, Form, and Content. Karen
Hewitt, president and toy designer of Learning Materials Workshop,
discusses the history of architectural toys and the significance of play
in developing creativity and lifelong learning skills. At the National
Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square Metro station. March
3, 6:30-8:00 p.m. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
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Summer Public Interest Fellowship Auction,
March 31
Joe Libertelli, jfl@udc.edu
Live and silent auctions, complimentary hors d’oeuvres, beer and
wine. All monies raised directly support summer public interest
fellowships! See http://www.law.udc.edu/?page=Fellowships.
On Thursday, March 31, 6:00 p.m., at UDC David A. Clarke School of Law,
4200 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Building 38, second floor. For more
information, or to donate an auction item, please contact Jaye Lopez at
jlopez@udc.edu
Unable to attend? Please consider making a tax-deductible
contribution to the School of Law’s Summer Public Interest Fellowships
Program. To make your gift online at http://www.law.udc.edu/donations/
and click on the Rauh Summer Public Interest Fellowships “Donate Now”
link. Or send a check made out to DC School of Law Foundation to Dean
Shelley Broderick, UDC-DCSL,` 4200 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington,
DC 20008. Be sure to write Summer Public Interest Fellowships in the
memo line of your check. Thank you for your support!
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