Heat Wave
Dear Swelterers:
The lyrics that Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote for the version of “Heat
Wave” that Martha and the Vandellas sang in the 1960’s (and Linda
Rondstadt sang in the 1970’s) aren’t really applicable, but the “Heat
Wave” lyrics that Irving Berlin wrote three decades earlier for Ethel
Waters to sing on Broadway fit the last fifteen days pretty well, and
they also prove that suggestive songs didn’t start with rappers.
We’re having a heat wave,
A tropical heat wave.
The temperature’s rising,
It isn’t surprising,
She certainly can can-can.
She’s starting a heat wave
By letting her seat wave
In such a way that
The customers say that
She certainly can can-can.
Gee, her anatomy
Makes the mercury
Jump to ninety three.
We’re having a heat wave,
A tropical heat wave.
The way she moves
That thermometer proves
That she certainly can can-can.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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In the last two weeks, the Gray administration has made appointments
to two important boards in the District. On July 13, just prior to the
city council’s summer recess, Mayor Gray forwarded to the council the
nominations of six individuals to serve on the Alcoholic Beverage
Control (ABC) Board. He has nominated Ruthanne Miller, the former chair
of the Board of Zoning Adjustment, to be a member and the chair of the
ABC Board, replacing Charles Brodsky, who resigned in May after
investigations were launched by the DC Inspector General and the DC
Attorney General in accusations of unethical conduct as a member of the
Board and after he was accused of impersonating a police officer.
Jeanette Mobley, a Ward Five resident and a ward coordinator in Gray’s
2010 mayoral campaign, was nominated to fill the seat vacated by Mital
Gandhi. Gray has renominated four current members of the Board: Nicholas
S. Alberti, Donald C. Brooks, Herman O. Jones, and Mike Silverstein.
(The term of Calvin Nophlin, a current member of the Board, doesn’t
expire until May 2012.)
At last weeks mayoral press conference, Gray announced that he had
selected Ron M. Linton to serve as chairman of the DC Taxicab
Commission. Linton will replace Leon Swain, who was not reappointed by
Gray. Linton is a lawyer with a long professional career that includes
serving on the Boards of the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority
and the DC Water and Sewer Authority. Linton, however, admits that he
has never attended a Taxicab Commission meeting, and that he has only a
superficial knowledge of the issues facing the regulatory body. In the
coming months, Linton, as chair, will have to dismantle the current
dysfunctional Taxicab Commission and possibly devise a new regulatory
scheme to oversee taxis in the District. In addition, Linton will have
to improve the District’s working relationship with cab drivers, gain
the confidence of taxicab users, and review and assess the proposed
taxicab medallion legislation currently before the city council.
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Ward Three Democratic Committee Task Force on
Government Ethics Reform
Shelley Tomkin, shelltomk@aol.com
The Ward Three Democratic Committee’s Task Force on Government
Ethics Reform is developing recommendations for statutory changes to DC
law designed to prevent corruption, malfeasance, and conflict of
interest among DC public officials and/or public employees in the
future. Topics to be covered include, but are not limited to, lobbying
and political fundraising. With these objectives in mind, the task force
is examining “best practices” in other jurisdictions as well as
soliciting input from community organizations and residents in Ward
Three. The research prepared by this task force will be shared with the
public and will be utilized to provide advice and guidance to the DC
Council. The Task Force members include Shelley Tomkin, Co-Chair;
Kahlill Palmer, Co-Chair; John Chelen; Sally McDonald; Thorn Pozen; and
Adam Tope.
The Task Force is seeking your comments and opinions pertaining to
this important topic. Please feel free to post them here or you may also
contact us directly at dcward3.dems.government.ethics@gmail.com
to share your views. The Task Force also welcomes any contacts you may
have with ethics experts or any links to ethics reform-related laws in
other jurisdictions that could assist with the development of our
recommendations.
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Surely the core of what looks like a problem of government is
actually quite simply a problem of that other form of American local
regulation — the rule of the lobbyist, or too much money chasing too
few potential recipients. It is borrowed, of course, from the emergence
and confirmation of this as the real fourth branch of national and
presumably of many state governments, here only a little obscured by the
overlapping of detailed proscription of its most obvious manifestations
— included the determination of actual bribery as a form of
relationship between ostensible “representatives of the people,” and
those with serious business (often involving payments of monies that
need not be disclosed, in forms that are difficult to discover or
describe, midwifed by those who have held office and have then used that
tenure to frame profitable relationships between groups and local
government, not merely for themselves but for the present councilmembers
themselves.
Councilmembers should be paid at actual rates appropriate to their
explicit functions, not, as at present, at some abstract and exaggerated
level. Past councilmembers and officials should be absolutely prohibited
from holding unconfessed relationships with present lobbyists. There
should be created an office of ombudsman to serve as alarm clock when
these illicit relationships are suspected or confirmed. The fiction of
part-time and voluntary service for those in office should be abolished
to reveal to everyone the actual income of councilmembers and other
officials, and perhaps even more significant the sources of this
external payment. And so on.
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DPW Trash Collections Will Start at 6:00 a.m.
Kevin B. Twine, kevin.twine@dc.gov
The DC Department of Public Works trash and recycling crews will
begin their collections an hour earlier, at 6:00 a.m., throughout the
week of August 1, due to predicted 90° and above temperatures and the
effect of the 90° plus heat index. Residents may put their trash and
recyclables out for pickup starting at 6:00 p.m. on the day before their
collections, so they do not have to change their morning schedules and
to make sure these materials are collected.
Throughout the summer, when the temperature and heat index are
predicted to be 90° or higher or the Metropolitan Washington Council of
Governments announces unhealthy air quality (Code Orange or Code Red
days), DPW collection crews will begin their work at 6:00 a.m. to avoid
health or environmental issues.
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Why I Must Continue to Fight for DC Teachers
Candi Peterson, saveourcounselors@gmail.com
As the General Vice President of the Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU)
, I’ve seen my fair share of teacher terminations and adverse actions
that have resulted in suspensions of teachers and school personnel. Many
of the teacher terminations in the past three years stem from Rhee’s
educational plan, which sought to get rid of a significant share of the
DC teacher workforce. I’ve seen situations in which teachers were
terminated without adequate investigations being conducted by DC Public
Schools. Imagine being fired without being able to give your side of the
story or have mitigating circumstances considered or pertinent witnesses
interviewed. I’ve come to terms with the fact that this was part of
Rhee’s plan to create a revolving door teacher workforce, all the
while privatizing public education.
It angers me that public school teachers have become the scapegoat
for all of society’s ills. Republicans and Democrats are both to
blame. Some of both support the notion that public education is a
failure and teachers are to blame. Far too long, teachers here in
Washington, DC, and nationwide have worked hard trying to help their
students succeed with inadequate funding, oversized classes, inadequate
resources and training, and teaching out of certification, while having
administrators jump on one educational bandwagon after another.
On Saturday, July 30, I was proud to be part of a nationwide
movement, the Save Our Schools March, that gathered on the Ellipse. We
must continue to do whatever it takes to fight these ongoing attacks on
public education and demand the resources so all children can receive a
high quality education. We must demand that the public have input into
public education and teachers be allowed to teach. We must continue to
insist on a thorough federal investigation of the extent of cheating in
DC Public Schools over the past three years and call for a moratorium on
IMPACT teacher evaluations and teacher terminations that were based on
flawed evaluative data.
Despite having my own personal battle of having my union pay
suspended illegally, I have decided to return to work at the Washington
Teachers’ Union on Monday, August 1. As an elected union leader, I
will wage my own fight on another front. In the meantime, as assaults on
teachers, school personnel, their unions, and the middle class increase,
it makes me proud that not only am I glad to be part of a union, I am
proud and willing to serve over four thousand teachers and school
personnel in the Washington Teachers’ Union as their elected general
vice president during the worst of times.
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CLASSIFIEDS — HOUSING
Seeking One Bedroom Apartment
Ted Knutson, dcreporter1@yahoo.com
I am a fiftyish professional seeking a one bedroom apartment for
occupancy on September 1 or October 1. Must allow two small, friendly,
clean, quiet dogs. I am a nonsmoker and a longtime DC resident. I can
pay up to two thousand dollars a month. I prefer Capitol Hill, but I am
open to other Metro-accessible locations. A basement apartment is okay.
I can provide great references.
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