Sophistication
Dear Sophisticates:
How did you experience Hurricane Irene? Dorothy and I had dinner
reservations Saturday night at Adour, in the St. Regis Hotel, and we
called both Friday and Saturday to make sure that the restaurant would
be open. It was easy to get there, since there was little traffic on the
streets, and it was easy to park, since there were a number of open
parking spaces on the block around the hotel. A lot of reservations had
been canceled, so we were able to get a table by a window to admire the
rain and the wind while we ate.
One of the featured wines on the Restaurant Week menu was a Lucien
Albrecht Cremant d’Alsace Brut Rose, and we ordered it. There was a
special reason that I wanted it. When I was a young teenager, I saw An
Affair to Remember on television. An Affair to Remember is best known
today because it is the romantic movie that inspired Meg Ryan and Tom
Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle, but it inspired a lot of other people
before its reputation was inflated by the later movie. What I remembered
best was that Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr ordered pink champagne on the
cruise ship where they met, and as a teenager that impressed me as the
height of sophistication. That was, of course, before I learned that
many cultivated oeniphiles with sophisticated palates looked askance at
pink champagne, and thought of it as a declasse wine. It took a few
years for me to outgrow that attitude, and to accept that if I liked
something it didn’t matter whether other people, even experts,
approved of it or not. Once I accepted that, it let me enjoy pink
champagne again, and to share in the reflected glow of sophistication
that Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr brought to it. Besides, if it’s a
recommended selection in an Alain Ducasse restaurant, how declasse can
it be?
So dinner was fine, and the drive home though the advance rains of
Irene was uneventful, and the half bottle of Brut Rose did its job of
putting me to sleep early — until Irene woke me by bringing the big
tree in the back yard down on the house and garage, and the tree broke a
couple windows and damaged the roof and chimneys. Ah well, there was a
much more serious accident in An Affair to Remember and, as truly
sophisticated people, Grant and Kerr rose above it. We will, too.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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People Living in Glass Houses
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
Last week, Councilmember Mary Cheh released the Report and
Recommendations of the Council’s Special Committee on Investigation of
Executive Personnel Practices (http://marycheh.com/reports/draftreport.pdf).
The report criticizes the Gray administration and says, “The Committee
concludes that children of senior staff members were hired by the
District government in violation of federal law, that the Gray
administration engaged in cronyism, that Mayoral appointees were paid
salaries in excess of the legal salary limits, and that other standard
personnel practices were not followed by the Gray administration,”
page 42. At a press conference following the Committee’s approval of
the report, Cheh and her fellow committee members, Wells and Catania,
called for an immediate overhaul of personnel regulations, policies, and
procedures in the Executive branch of District government, including
revising the District’s Comprehensive Merit Personnel Act. Cheh was,
however, both evasive and testy when I asked her if she would recommend
a similar review of the council’s own personnel rules and procedures.
Currently all council employees (198 staff positions in FY 2011),
whether employed in a councilmember’s office or working in an office
servicing the entire council (for example, the budget, general counsel,
and Secretary’s offices) are political appointees. They are appointed
by and serve at the pleasure of the councilmember who hired them. As a
result, the council lacks a professional staff whose experiences and
expertise transcends the political fortunes of its members (see, for
example, the DC Appleseed 1999 report on “Operational Reform of the
District of Columbia Council: A Fix-It Yourself Manual,” http://www.appleseed.org/project/d-c--council-reform).
In addition, there are few personnel rules or regulations regarding
council staffers. Instead, each councilmember has complete authority
over his or her personal staffers (see Section 273 of Rules of
Organization and Procedure for the Council of the District of Columbia,
Council Period 19: “Each member may assign, remove, and determine the
remuneration for his or her personal staff, subject to appropriations
and positions allocated by the Council”). And several council staffers
have salaries that far exceed the $125,000 pay of councilmembers (e.g.,
the council’s new chief information officer earns $155,000, and
the chief of staff of Jack Evans’ office is paid $132,000.
The council’s current personnel system leads to the misuse of
taxpayer dollars and leaves staffers vulnerable to abuse by their
employees. In virtually every council office, staffers are required to
work in councilmembers’ campaigns. In many instances, employees fail
to take official leave when they work on political campaigns. Over the
years, various councilmembers have used their staffers to serve as
chauffeurs, baby sitters, facilitators, gofers, servants, and sexual
partners. The recently concluded investigation of Councilmember Harry
Thomas by Inspector General Irvin Nathan details how, in 2007 and 2008,
Councilmember Thomas used his council staffers to misappropriate more
that $300,000 from earmarked funds of the Children and Youth Investment
Trust Corporation (CYITC) by making telephone calls and doing most of
the paperwork to commit the fraud, including preparing a grant
application, program description, work plan, budget, and false quarterly
reports. Attorney Robert Bennett’s 2010 investigation Councilmember
Marion Barry’s office for the council details Barry’s use of a
$15,000 personal service contract in order to hire his girlfriend, Donna
Watts-Brighthaupt, to work in his council office.
The District’s personnel rules and procedures — both in the
executive and legislative branches — need to be reviewed. If the
council fails to do both, it will not provide the comprehensive overhaul
that is needed, and it will not assure the public that its elected
officials have the will and commitment to improve the management and
ethical performance of this city’s government.
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Council’s Self-Aggrandizement
Karl Jeremy, mayandkarl@gmail.com
Viewers have watched the Addams and Partridge Families, the Real
Housewives, and the Kardashians and now its time to a very dysfunctional
family, the DC council. How did this group of self-promoters get
themselves elected to public office? Why did we ever believe their
campaign rhetoric?
It became clear when the mayor placed the budget menu on the table
that each family member was thinking a la carte. It seems Vincent Orange
was the only one who walked away with two extra sides — Lincoln
Theater and Emancipation Day — and Tommy Wells was proud to make the
offer in return for Orange’s vote that pitted the family against each
other, residents, and the mayor.
Even though Mayor Gray has shown he is capable of sound leadership,
as was the case when he was Council Chair, things have changed
dramatically. Under Chairman Brown, lots of family secrets have been
revealed in the press, and none of them is good. Little allegiance or
integrity exists among this group who know better than to steal from
funds set aside for constituents or attempt to improve their public
image at the expense of taxpayers who don’t drive fancy SUVs. There is
noticeable self promotion and conceit that exacerbates the rancor and
ability of the family to join ranks around an issue.
As the nation begins to focus on the 2012 election, District
residents need to take a good look at each and every councilmember. Some
will not be up for reelection. However, there is no time like the
present for serious scrutiny. Just as TV contracts are not renewed,
District residents need to decide with their votes which family members
stay or go. If the city is to escape the watchful eye of the Control
Board, and thank your lucky stars they are watching, voters need to
elect capable decision makers rather than councilmembers who think only
in terms of self aggrandizement.
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Washington Post
Searching for a Social Media Editor
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com
Twitter was founded in 2006 and the Washington Post is now
searching for a social media editor, http://tinyurl.com/3kt6lkx. Why so
soon? Wouldn’t it be better to wait a few more years to see if this
Internet thing pans out to anything? It could be just a fad. Community
engagement? That’s for the birds, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHVbxsbECCM
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The Constitution does not have to be amended to make the District of
Columbia a state. All it takes to admit a state to the union is for
Congress to pass a law admitting it and for the President to sign it
(see Article IV, section 3). No supermajority or constitutional
amendment is required. This is because Article I, section 8 of the
Constitution only sets a maximum, not a minimum, size for the “Seat of
Government of the United States,” otherwise known as the District of
Columbia. The size of the original District was already reduced once in
1846 when the City of Alexandria and the Country of Alexandria (now
Arlington) were given back to the Commonwealth of Virginia. This
decreased the size of the District by about 40 percent.
What DC’s statehood constitution, as well as H.R. 265, the New
Columbia Admission Act, introduced in January 2011 by our Delegate
Eleanor Holmes Norton, would do is shrink the size of the District of
Columbia to the area defined by Congress in the 1973 Home Rule Act as
the National Capital Service Area and make the rest of the District, i.e.,
the residential and commercial areas, the State of New Columbia. The
National Capital Service Area includes the White House, Capitol, Supreme
Court and their office buildings, the Federal Triangle and Federal
headquarters on Independence Avenue, the Mall, monuments and East and
West Potomac Parks.
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It is easy to see why people get so confused, if they haven’t
delved into the nitty-gritty details of how “DC Statehood” would
work.
In fact, “DC Statehood” is a short way of saying that the
proposed state of New Columbia would surround a much smaller District of
Columbia that would encompass the Mall, the Capitol, the White House,
etc., where few people live. The lines were carved out by Congress in
the 1990’s. So, there is no Constitutional Amendment needed to create
a state, since Congress would still have a District of Columbia, reduced
to the lines they established. And Congress has already reduced DC’s
size in the 1800’s by a simple vote when the part of DC south of the
Potomac was retroceded to Virginia. If DC still exists as a federal
district, there is no constitutional problem involved in admitting a new
state made up of the residential and business sections of the current
District of Columbia.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Community Meetings on the Health Insurance
Exchanges, August 31
Michelle Phipps-Evans, michelle.phipps-evans@dc.gov
The Mayor’s Health Reform Implementation Committee (HRIC) cordially
invites members of the public to join Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry
in a community dialogue on the “future of health care in the District
of Columbia.” This meeting, which is open to the community, will be
Wednesday, August 31, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at the Thurgood
Marshall Academy Public Charter High School at 2427 Martin Luther King,
Jr., Avenue, SE. Parking is available, and Metro is accessible via the
Green line to the Anacostia Metrorail Station.
President Barack Obama signed the health care reform bill into law on
March 23, 2010, and the HRIC has been working since then to head up the
effort to implement the law in the District. The HRIC is encouraging you
to attend its next meeting to discuss what health reform means for you:
more options for health insurance, better consumer protections, and help
for District residents and small businesses to pay for health insurance.
The HRIC is inviting all District residents, whether you have health
insurance or not, if you have a preexisting condition, or if you’re a
small business owner. A lot of information is available online on health
reform — what it is and what it will mean for you, your family or
business — at http://www.healthreform.dc.gov.
The HRIC needs as much input as possible to make sure that the District’s
health insurance marketplace offers high quality insurance at a price
you can afford. For residents who are unable to make the meetings, the
HRIC encourages you to take the online survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DCHRICSurvey.
Residents may request paper copies by contacting Health Policy Analyst
Brendan Rose at Brendan.Rose@dc.gov or at 442-7811. For more information
on the Ward 8 One City Insured Public Meeting, please contact HRIC
staff, Dorinda White at 442-8992 or Dorinda.white@dc.gov,
or Councilmember Marion Barry’s staff, Brenda Richardson at 698-1668
or brendarichardson7@yahoo.com.
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Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American
Presidency from Ford to Obama,
September 8
Tonya Butler-Truesdale, gotonyago@gmail.com
The United States had never lost a war — that is, until 1975, when
it was forced to flee Saigon. The legacy of this first defeat has
haunted every president since, especially on the decision of whether to
put “boots on the ground” and commit troops to war. In Haunting
Legacy, the father-daughter journalist team of Marvin Kalb and
Deborah Kalb presents a compelling, accessible, and hugely important
history of presidential decision-making on one crucial issue: in light
of the Vietnam debacle, under what circumstances should the United
States go to war? Every president has faced the ghosts of Vietnam in his
own way, though each has been wary of being sucked into another
unpopular war. Equal parts taut history, revealing biography, and
cautionary tale, Haunting Legacy is must reading for anyone
trying to understand the power of the past to influence war-and-peace
decisions of the present, and of the future. The book will be available
for purchase.
Thursday, September 8. The bar opens at 11:30 a.m., lunch at 12:15
p.m., lecture, presentation, and question and answer session, 1:00-2:00
p.m. Price: $25, members; $30, nonmembers; $10, lecture only. At the
Woman’s National Democratic Club, 1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW. We
can be found online at both http://www.democraticwoman.org
and http://www.thewhittemorehouse.com
and by phone at 232-7363.
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National Building Museum Events, September 6,
8
Stacy Adamson, sadamson@nbm.org
Tuesday, September 6, 10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m., Book of the Month: Tip
Tip Dig Dig. Join us in the Building Zone for a special reading of Tip
Tip Dig Dig by Emma Garcia. Learn about the wonderful world of
construction vehicles while enjoying this interactive story. Readings at
10:30 and 11:30 a.m. Free with paid admission to the Building Zone.
Drop-in program. Recommended for ages 3 to 5.
Thursday, September 8, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Building in the 21st Century:
LED Lighting: A Clash of Cultures. Jack W. Curran, president of LED
Transformations, LLC, explains how LED technology differs from
traditional lighting sources and discusses key issues for architects and
lighting designers who are looking for suitable applications for LEDs.
Free. Registration required. Walk-in registration based on availability.
Thursday, September 8, 6:30–8:00 p.m. DC Builds: Big Box Retail.
Major “big box” stores have already arrived in DC or are in the
planning stages. Panelists discuss how this retail model is affecting DC’s
planning, land use, transportation, and economy. $12 members, $12
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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Thirty-third Annual Adams Morgan Day Festival,
September 11
amday@ammainstreet.org
The annual Adams Morgan Day Festival is once again upon us.
Washington DC’s premier street festival will be held this year, the
33rd in the festival’s history, on Sunday, September 11, from 12:00
p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Events will take place along 18th Street, NW, between
Columbia Road and Florida Avenue and related venues. Arts on Belmont
opens at 10:00 a.m., and other adjacent venues are at Marie Reed School,
Kalorama Park, and Unity Park.
Many of the unique qualities that have made the festival popular
throughout the years will once again be present at this year’s event,
including multiple stages showcasing an eclectic mix of live music,
cultural and dance performances, a variety of diverse food and craft
vendors offering both international and local cuisine, an arts showcase,
a kid’s area, and much more. Visitors can also enjoy some “people
watching” from neighborhood sidewalk cafes, shopping from street
vendors in the middle of the street, or taking in shopping from local
indie businesses.
Six blocks of vendor booths will line the center of 18th Street,
offering international arts and crafts, jewelry, clothes, and unique
gifts and services. The two main stages, at Florida and Columbia,
bookend 18th Street with popular live music with the former offering
international music including, Latin and Caribbean and the latter
offering sounds of American roots including soul and alternative rock.
The Green Pavilion, introduced in 2009, is back, with vendors
committed to creating a positive “ecological footprint.” Products,
sample and services covering everything from personal care to office and
home products will be featured under this tent. The Festival was first
held in 1978, and is inspired by the culture and creativity that comes
from the synergy of diverse cultures. The Adams Morgan Day Festival is
about celebrating all cultures together. Free to the public, the
festival attracts spectators from DC, Maryland, Virginia, and
Pennsylvania. Known for its range of music and dance performances, youth
activities, and vendors galore, AMDAY leaves a positive image in the
minds of visitors and tourists alike.
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CLASSIFIEDS — RECOMMENDATIONS
As Gary notes in his opening remarks to this issue of themail, a
large tree has fallen on the back of our house. We need referrals to
good tree removal companies, and I’m sure others could use your
recommendations, too. If you’ve had a good experience with a company
in recent years, please share it with everyone in the group. E-mail it
to themail@dcwatch.com.
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