Ulysses S. Grant
Dear Historians:
Ulysses S. Grant had one of the most troubled presidencies in the
history of the United States. The nation didn’t have to fight a war
— it had just fought the Civil War. It was a time of major economic
expansion and growth, but of financial uncertainty because of a complex
web of government and private corruption that ruined the markets and a
series of scandals that unsettled the nation. If not for his
overwhelming popularity as the commanding general who won the Civil War,
Grant could not have won reelection to his second term, and he chose to
withdraw from consideration rather than run for a third term that he
likely would have lost.
Grant’s failure as president was that he surrounded himself with
dishonest people, considered them his friends, and rewarded them with
his personal loyalty. When Grant’s friends used their positions in his
administration or their connections to his administration to benefit
themselves personally, Grant did not act decisively to cut them off and
to punish their wrongdoing, and sometimes he acted to protect them from
punishment. The scandals they hatched ranged from market manipulation to
the selling of government contracts to fraudulent land grants to tax
evasion and bribery to nepotism. Grant was not a reformer, and he acted
more often as an enemy of reformers than as their ally. Yet if Robert
Trout had done a report on the Grant administration, with the same legal
standards and standards of proof that he used in his report on the Fenty
administration’s contracting procedures with regard to Fenty’s
friends and fraternity brothers, Trout would have come to the same
conclusion with regard to Grant as he did with regard to Fenty — it’s
not possible to prove any direct connection between him and the scandals
or to show proof that links him directly to benefiting from them.
Fenty’s advocates are touting this report as a vindication of Fenty
and more — as clearing Fenty’s allies of any wrongdoing and clearing
Fenty’s administration of ever having had any scandals. Sinclair
Skinner, a key figure whose acts have been referred by Trout to the US
Attorney’s Office, is bold enough to claim that the report justifies
him and, on the basis of its conclusions, to demand apologies from Mayor
Gray and the councilmembers who requested Trout’s investigation. The Washington
Post’s editorial board, which shares Mr. Skinner’s code of
ethics and close ties to Mayor Fenty, editorialized on Monday about “the
shady deals that weren’t,” and also called for apologies from those
who dared to question those shady deals, http://tinyurl.com/46px7v3
Let’s get it straight. U.S. Grant was never proven to have
personally participated in or benefited from the scandals of his
administration, but that didn’t wash clean the sorry record of his
administration. It was still scandal-ridden and on balance a failure,
and only those whose sense of honesty and integrity was subservient to
their political partisanship ever tried to deny it.
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In the last issue of themail, I argued with the Washington Post’s
editorial board’s misstatements about the Board of Elections and
Ethics’ procedures and processes. The Post was alarmed that the
BOEE would accept the challenge against Patrick Mara’s petition to be
a candidate in the special election to elect an at-large councilmember,
because Mara is a Republican, and the Board would act as Democratic
partisans against him. I wrote, “Regardless of party, the
institutional bias of the Board of Elections has always been to accept
petitions and to put candidates on the ballot if any reasonable argument
can be made to accept their petitions. To prevail, complainants have to
present overwhelming evidence that petition signatures are bad and that
there aren’t sufficient valid signatures on the petitions — and in
my experience even overwhelming evidence may not be enough to convince
the Board. The Post’s insinuations that partisan bias
influences the BOEE’s decisions on this point are simply
unsubstantiated.” Now the BOEE has issued its ruling on Mara’s
petition and, as I predicted, it gave Mara the benefit of every
doubt — and gave him the benefit even when there wasn’t any doubt
— and allowed him to be placed on the ballot as a candidate. Read the
decision at http://www.dcwatch.com/govern/boee110315.htm
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Chief of Staff, Part 1
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
It was somewhat anticlimactic when Vincent Gray walked into the press
room in the Wilson Building today at 5:00 p.m. to announce that he had
requested and accepted the resignation of his chief of staff, Gerri
Mason Hall. In a written press release issued this evening, Mayor Gray
indicated that “the action was taken to allow the Gray administration
to move forward with the business of the city.” He went on to state
that, “the distractions of the past few weeks have overshadowed the
important work of this government.”
Gerri Hall’s firing was the last twist in a day that surprised even
longtime Wilson Building observers and left them speechless. At 10:00
a.m., Gray had held his regular weekly press conference in the press
room. Hall, who usually attended the press conference, had not been
present because she was at Councilmember Mary Cheh’s performance
oversight hearing on the Office of the City Administrator and the
Executive Office of the Mayor. Cheh grilled City Administrator Allen Lew
on a host of issues, including the high salaries being paid to senior
members of the Gray administration and how the children of Gray
officials secured positions in the District government. Hall sat calmly
in the audience during Cheh’s questioning of Lew, and she indicated
that she would return to the hearing at 3:00 p.m. to testify and respond
to questions regarding the EOM.
In the meantime, Gray abruptly ended his morning press conference
after about an hour, after letting it slip that he had to attend a
meeting with thirty-five business leaders. I was curious about the
meeting because it had not been posted on Gray’s public schedule, so I
went to the 9th Street office of the DC Chamber of Commerce to learn
more about the it. The Chamber’s president, Barbara Lang, hosted the
meeting with two other business organizations, the Federal City Council
and the Greater Washington Board of Trade. Afterwards, Lang very
diplomatically indicated that the purpose of the private meeting was for
the business community to raise to concerns with the mayor about the
impact that the recent snafus and scandals were having on his
administration. However, the real purpose of the meeting was that the
three business groups are demanding changes within the Gray
administration. To that end, for the past week, the leaders of the three
organizations have met secretly to discuss which members of the Gray
administration they wanted replaced, and to come up with
business-approved replacements for them. For example, prior to today’s
meeting with Gray, they had developed a short list of substitutes for
Gerri Hall, including John Hill, CEO of the Federal City Council; Robert
Bobb, former City Administrator under Mayor Williams and now emergency
financial manager of Detroit’s public schools; and Herbert Tillery,
former Deputy Mayor in the Williams Administration. Certain members of
the business community have even indicated that they would raise
substantial funds to help “promote” their approved candidates to the
community and the media.
Shortly after Gray returned to the Wilson Building, rumors spread
throughout the building that Gerri Hall would not be testifying at Cheh’s
afternoon hearing and that she would be resigning. Gray denied any nexus
between his meeting with the business groups and Hall’s resignation.
At his afternoon press conference, he appointed Paul Quander, the Deputy
Mayor for Public Safety, as the interim Chief of Staff. This weekend,
Gray’s cabinet members and senior staffers in the EOM will be going on
a retreat to discuss, and perhaps resolve, some of the problems of the
past two weeks, so sometime next week we may know whether there will be
any more vacancies in the administration, and perhaps get some insights
into who will emerge as replacements.
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The recent enumeration count of the Metro area’s homeless
population offered a one-day snapshot of the homeless population in
Washington, DC, and surrounding counties. According to the report, on
January 27 11,774 people were counted and identified as homeless in the
Washington, DC, metropolitan region — living in shelters, streets,
alleys, bridges, parks, and campsites. Most alarming, of the 1,536
homeless families counted in the entire Metro area, 800 (52.08 percent)
were Washington, DC, homeless parents of 1,536 children under the age of
seventeen. Washington homeless child rates are likely to be much higher,
since the enumeration count does not include unaccompanied homeless
youth.
Many of these children are attending DCPS schools, and measures must
be in place to ensure this considerable school population receive its
equitable right and access to education as non-homeless students.
Homelessness has a devastating impact on the future prospects of
children whose education is hampered by social and economic
circumstances that are beyond their control and negatively influencing
their mental, social, and emotional well being — exposing them to
great social risks and several negative outcomes including abuse and
neglect, behavioral and socio-emotional problems, physical health
problems, developmental delays, and sexual exploitation.
In addition, DC’s school closures and consolidation policy may be
gravely contributing to young homeless children’s poor performance,
high turnover, and dropout rates. This was recently identified as a
factor in the increase rates of child homelessness, dropout rates,
frequent school change, instability, and poor performance in several
cities pursuing similar school policies; see http://www.icphusa.org/PDF/reports/ICPH_SchoolClosuresPolicyReport.pdf
and http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/CCSRSchoolClosings-Final.pdf
Our legislatures and school district must begin to recognize this
alarming phenomena and must initiate efforts to address the social and
educational needs of the most vulnerable of our city residents trapped
in deep poverty and a promise of a grim future.
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Call for Submissions to the 38th Annual
Conference on DC Historical Studies
John H. Muller, jmuller.washingtonsyndicate@gmail.com
The 38th annual conference on DC Historical Studies will be held on
November 4 and 5, 2011. Submit your proposal(s) now for individual
papers/presentations and panels. In addition to papers, you are
encouraged to submit new films, walking tours, author talks, and
workshops of practical advice on research and preservation. The deadline
for submissions is June 1.
The conference is the forum to consider the latest work on the
history of Washington, DC, and its surrounds, with lively presentations
including new research, oral history, walking tours, films, new
publications, and the History Network. All topics are welcome that are
related to local DC area history and the history of federal government
history or the history of the nearby Northern Virginia and Maryland
suburbs, if clearly related to the history of local life. Past speakers
have addressed art, music, archaeology, biography, military, legal,
social, architectural topics and many more.
For a flavor of these past conferences, see the following programs
from previous years:
http://www.historydc.org/UserFiles/DCHSC2009.pdf (2009)
http://www.historydc.org/UserFiles/DCHSC2008.pdf (2008)
http://www.historydc.org/2007conference.aspx (2007)
http://www.h-net.org/~dclist/DCHSC2006.pdf
(2006)
http://www.h-net.org/~dclist/2005DCHSC.pdf
(2005)
Individual presenters should submit an abstract of the paper,
professional title (if applicable), and affiliation, contact information
(E-mail), and audio-visual/IT equipment needs. Panel proposals should
submit a brief description of the session, contact information, titles
and affiliations of each panelist (with a primary contact). The annual
History Network on Friday provides space for historical, archival, and
community organizations to display brochures, fliers, and other
materials explaining their activities and research. Proposals should be
E-mailed to conference committee at dchistoricalstudies@gmail.com
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
UDC Law School Open House, March 19
Joe Libertelli, jfl@udc.edu
The School of Law will hold its Spring 2011 Law Day-Open House
Program on Saturday, March 19, at the School of Law, 4200 Connecticut
Avenue, NW, in Building 39, 2nd floor from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The
program will allow Law Day participants to experience a law class taught
by one of our professors; listen to and speak with students who will
talk about their experiences in law school — from how they’ve manage
law school stress and exams to providing tips about how to succeed in
law school; and talk with and receive information and advice from
admission and financial aid professionals.
The application fee will be waived for those participants who attend
this program and apply. Register on our web site today. If you have any
questions or need additional information please contact the Office of
Admissions at 274-7341 or lawadmission@udc.edu.
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Woman’s National Democratic Club Luncheon,
February 22
Tonya Butler-Truesdale, gotonyago@gmail.com
Voices for Peace and the Environment: Gearing-Up for 2012. Alice and
Lincoln Day will present a short film: What We Are Leaving in Iraq —
An Iraq War Veteran Speaks About What He Saw, an interview with former
Sergeant Michael Fitzpatrick, illustrated with selections from the three
thousand photos he took during his two deployments, 2004-2008. Alice and
Lincoln Day will also announce the forthcoming public TV screening in
April 2011 of their film, Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives — The
Environmental Footprint of War. There will then be a panel discussion on
the pursuit of peace and protection of the environment. Panelists
include Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies; Brent Blackwelder,
Friends of the Earth; and Kevin Martin, Peace Action. $18 members; $23
non-members. Hot and cold hors d’oeuvres will be served; there will be
a cash bar. Thursday, March 31, 6:30-8:30 p.m., at the Woman’s
National Democratic Club, 1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW. Make your
reservation online at http://www.democraticwoman.org
, send an E-mail to reservations@democraticwoman.org,
or telephone 232-7363 ext. 3003 to contact Patricia Fitzgerald.
###############
National Building Museum Events, March 23-24
Stacy Adamson, sadamson@nbm.org
Wednesday, March 23, 6:30-8:00 p.m., Women of Architecture lecture
celebrates Women’s History Month: Annabelle Selldorf: Architecture and
Context. Annabelle Selldorf, FAIA, founding principal of Selldorf
Architects and designer of the Neue Galerie New York, will discuss her
current work, including 200 Eleventh Avenue, a residential tower in
Manhattan’s West Chelsea neighborhood; the SIMS Municipal Recycling
Facility, New York City’s principal processing facility for
recyclables; as well as a museum renovation and research center at the
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown,
Massachusetts. Beverly Willis, FAIA, president and founder of the
Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, and a founding trustee of the
National Building Museum, will provide opening remarks and recognize
Women’s History Month. $12 museum members, National Museum of Women in
the Arts members, and students with valid ID; $20 nonmembers. Prepaid
registration required. Walk-in registration based on availability.
March 24, 12:30-1:30 p.m., Putting Smart Growth to Work in Rural
Communities. Free, registration required; walk-in registration based on
availability. Many rural communities are facing challenges, including
rapid growth at metropolitan edges, declining rural populations, and
loss of working lands. Anna Read, of the International City/County
Management Association, and Stephanie Bertaina, Environmental Protection
Agency, present strategies that can help guide growth in rural areas
while protecting natural and working lands and preserving rural
character.
March 24, 6:30-8:00 p.m., For the Greener Good: Historic Preservation
vs. Sustainability. Saving existing buildings is an inherently green
strategy. But how does a community balance the historic fabric of
vernacular architecture with the need to bring older buildings up to
modern environmental standards? Can we have it both ways? $12 members.
Free students, $20 nonmembers. Prepaid registration required. Walk-in
registration based on availability.
All events at the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW,
Judiciary Square Metro station. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
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CLASSIFIEDS — HELP WANTED
Landscaper and Bricklayer
H. and T. Foster, Petworth, Incanato@earthlink.net
We are looking for a couple of people to help us out this spring. We
need a quality, affordable landscaper to turn under (plough up) the
grass (we believe it is fescue) in about a quarter-acre backyard prior
to completely replanting and re-sodding it for a combination of
perennials and possibly some vegetables.
We also need to replace our front and back walkways. Currently they
are plain concrete but we want either brick pavers or flagstone. Let us
know of any good experiences you have had with contractors who do this
kind of work.
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