Supporters
Dear Supporters:
Are you supporting a candidate in the party primaries on April 3, or
are you putting your hopes on independent candidates’ emerging for the
November general election? We’ve had very few voters’ endorsements
and recommendations in themail. Please send them for the next two
issues, so that your fellow readers will have the benefit of your wisdom
as they decide whom to vote for.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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On Saturday, early voting centers for the April 3 primary election
opened in every ward of the city. The centers will be open through March
31. The list of them and their hours of operation are detailed on the
home page of the DC Board of Elections and Ethics, http://www.dcboee.org.
Voter turnout on Saturday was very light, with the exception of the
Chevy Chase Community Center in Ward Three, which processed 324 voters,
while the early voting center in Ward 8 at the Southeast Tennis and
Learning Center had only 47 ballots cast in the ten and a half hour
period. Low voter turnout is attributable, in part to the fact that this
the first year that party primaries in the District are being held in
April, as opposed to September. While this may explain the low voter
turnout, I still wonder why the candidates and their campaigns did not
try to greet voters or distribute literature outside any of the five
polling sites I visited. The only presence most of the campaigns had at
the early voting centers was the sea of yard signs and posters lining
sidewalks and walkways outside of the polling sites.
When the BOEE conducts its review and assessment of the 2012
elections, serious consideration should be given to scaling back the
number and size of the early voting centers, especially given their size
and the manpower required to staff them.
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Last year it was a “surge” in property crimes that generated
fear-of-crime reports in the news (dcwatch, April 4, 2011). This year it’s
robberies, “up by more than 30 percent in the District,” reports the
Washington Post (March 20, http://tinyurl.com/7u7fspq),
following the Washington Times’s fear-mongering “40 percent
increase that includes twice as many robberies at gunpoint than at this
time last year” (February 19, http://tinyurl.com/6vdhfny).
The common thread to all these scare stories is a simple comparison of
this year’s count versus last year’s count, and if there are more
crimes this year than last, well, let’s go scare the citizenry with
another crime-is-surging report. These reports lead to vicious on-line
comments. “Come to DC for the packs of savage teens and robbers
cackling with entitlement as they perpetrate,” writes one, on the Post
web site. “Declare war on them and shoot them dead on the spot,”
writes another.
But in both cases, that of burglaries last year and of robberies this
year, the crime data show nothing but a return to normal rates from an
exceptional low. On robberies, for example, last year’s count was the
lowest in years, just as the burglary count in 2010 was the lowest in
years. In both cases, the explanation is simple: the winters of 2010 and
2011 were frightful, keeping people indoors, and sharply reducing
opportunities for robbers and burglars alike. This year, the warmest DC
winter in history, people have been out on the street, strolling about
and enjoying the mild weather, and sometimes presenting inviting targets
to thieves. Presto, the crime count is up, and not just in any one
location, as might be the case if we were under assault by a few
criminals, but all across the District. The weather’s been nice all
across the District, so crime is up all across the District.
By my count (obtained from the MPD crime map site), there were 794
robberies in the District between January 1 and March 13 (how the Post
gets 875, citing the same source for their data, I do not know). Sure,
that’s one-third more than the 582 recorded during the same period
last year, a “jump”, indeed. But it’s lower than the 891 recorded
in 2009, and practically identical to the 793 recorded in 2008. As for
robberies with guns, the 324 reported this year is less than the 329
reported in 2009, and not a lot more than the 288 reported in 2008. In
short, the 2012 robbery counts are normal counts for the District, in
normal weather conditions, and amount to a “jump” in crime only by
comparison to two years of exceptionally low robbery counts,
attributable to harsh winter weather.
Sure, it’s the city; one has to be appropriately cautious. But the
widespread near-panic of a violent crime wave engendered by these
fear-of-crime reports is unwarranted. The newspapers would do better to
observe that “crime levels return to normal, after two abnormally
low-crime years.” But that wouldn’t sell any papers, would it?
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While there may be no doubt that Keshini Ladduwhatty is correct in
her post [themail, March 21] that PEPCO’s tentacles burrow deep, his
inference that Phil Mendelson’s owning PEPCO stock somehow influenced
his vote on Elizabeth Noel seems to me to be a giant stretch of
imagination.
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Ward 5 Heartbeat
Abigail Padou, editor@ward5heartbeat.org
Articles and features in the Spring 2012 issue of the Ward 5
Heartbeat include: “3-Way Race Emerges for Ward 5 Council Seat,”
“Special: Profiles of Candidates in the Ward 5 Special Election,”
“DC Zoning Administrator Steered Marijuana to Ward 5,” “Residents
Fume over Capital Area Food Bank Construction,” and much more,
including slide shows of local brewery DC Brau and the Noyes School
Chess Championship.
Brookland Heartbeat is now the Ward 5 Heartbeat. We
changed our name to better reflect the neighborhoods we serve. As of the
spring issue, our circulation has increased to approximately nineteen
thousand households in Ward 5. Ward 5 Heartbeat is a nonprofit
community newspaper.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Building in the Twenty-First Century, March 29
Stacy Adamson, sadamson@nbm.org
Thursday, March 29, 12:30-1:30 p.m., Building in the 21st Century:
Green and Energy-Efficient Trends in Construction. Harvey Bernstein,
vice president of industry insights and alliances, leads McGraw-Hill
Construction’s thought leadership, market research, and green building
initiatives. Mr. Bernstein discusses key trends in green and
energy-efficient retrofit and renovation including operational
improvements and financial and human factor benefits driving these
investments. Mr. Bernstein highlights building owner, facilities
manager, tenant and occupant perspectives as well as market sizing data
on green building in different sectors. Free event at the National
Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square Metro station.
Registration required, register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
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Woman’s National Democratic Club Meetings,
April 5, 12
Patricia Bitondo, pbitondo@aol.com
Thursday, April 5, The Honorable Donna Edwards. Congresswoman Edwards
represents Maryland’s fourth Congressional District. When first
elected to the Congress in 2008, Congresswoman Edwards became the first
African American woman to represent the state of Maryland in the US
House. Ms. Edwards sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure and
Science and Technology committees and on the Tom Lantos Human Rights
Commission. Ms. Edwards is also a member of the Congressional Black
Caucus and the Progressive Caucus, and was recently chosen to coucher
the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue”
task force. She is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the
University of New Hampshire School of Law. She has lived in Prince
George’s County for more than twenty-five years and her son is a
recent university graduate. Congresswoman Edwards works tirelessly to
improve the lot of women and has spoken out on many issues, including
making certain that the minimum wage covers workers such as restaurant
workers where the wage has remained unchanged for twenty-one years —
still at $2.15 an hour. Don’t miss the chance to hear and have a
dialogue with Congresswoman Edwards. At the Woman’s National
Democratic Club, 1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW. Bar opens at 11:30 a.m.;
lunch 12:15 p.m.; lecture, presentation, Q&A: 1:00-2:00 p.m. Members
$25, nonmembers $30; lecture only $10. Register at http://tinyurl.com/7kkuyws
Thursday, April 12, luncheon: Barbara Slavin, Containment Can Work in
Iran. Some of you may remember how impressed we were when Barbara Slavin
came to speak to us just after her stint as a public policy scholar at
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the
International Institute for Peace where she had written Bitter
Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the Twisted Path to
Confrontation. She is a regular commentator on US foreign policy and
Iran on NPR, PBS, and C-SPAN. A career journalist, she has previously
served as assistant managing editor of world and national security of The
Washington Times, senior diplomatic reporter for USA TODAY, Cairo
correspondent for The Economist and as an editor at The New
York Times Week in Review. She is currently a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. Ms. Slavin has covered the
Arab-Israeli conflict and has made seven trips to Iran. She was the
first US newspaper reporter to interview Iranian president Mahoud
Ahmadinejad. Iran is so important to the rest of the world now. Ms.
Slavin is an expert, who speaks very clearly and you will come away
understanding much more than you did before you came to hear her. At the
Woman’s National Democratic Club, 1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW. Bar
opens at 11:30 a.m.; lunch 12:15 p.m.; lecture, presentation, Q&A:
1:00-2:00 p.m. Members $25, nonmembers $30; lecture only $10. Register
at http://tinyurl.com/838k7j9
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