Disagreements

Dear Friends:

Donald Lief, below, asks about our remembrances of William Raspberry, and he recalls specifically Raspberry’s columns in which he argued with his Washington cabbie. Today, Jeff Jacobs wrote a column in the Boston Globe, http://www.jeffjacoby.com/12041/public-discourse-without-the-hard-zinger, in which he celebrates Raspberry’s strengths as a columnist, and also recalls those cabbie conversations.

“As public discourse grew increasingly shrill, Raspberry worked to understand the views of those he disagreed with. Fairness didn’t mean humorlessness. Some of Raspberry’s best — and funniest — columns were those recounting his arguments with an imaginary cabdriver, through whom he voiced plausible objections to his own positions.

“Often these dealt with touchy subjects. A 2000 column headlined ‘Separate but Equalizing’ opens with the cabby needling his famous columnist passenger — both of them black — about how civil rights liberals who once fought for color-blind integration now advocated loudly for color-conscious ‘diversity.’ Raspberry tells him that while black institutions in generations past were the product of segregation — ‘we started them because white people wouldn’t let us in theirs’ — black organizations today, such as the National Association of Black Journalists, were vehicles of minority empowerment.

“’Let me see if I get this,’ Raspberry’s cabby says. ‘If white people start white organizations, that’s segregation. If minorities start minority organizations, that’s diversity. That it?’ Back and forth they tangle, and by the column’s end Raspberry has conveyed his stand on a divisive racial issue, while simultaneously making it clear that people of goodwill could see the issue very differently.

“One of the lessons a life of opinion-writing had imparted to him, Raspberry observed in 2006, was that ‘it is entirely possible for you to disagree with me without being, on that account, either a scoundrel or a fool.’”

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Flooding in Bloomingdale
Betsy McDaniel, Bloomingdale, bloomingdame@gmail.com

[An open letter to Kenyan McDuffie and other councilmembers] Do you intend to call for another “All hands on deck” today [July 23]? Will the Bloomingdale neighborhood continue to live in anxiety today and throughout this period of summer storms — some forecast, others unexpected? The anxiety combined with the physical and emotional exhaustion of the cleanup, the potential health hazards, permanent property damage, financial loss, lost time at work, loss of business income . . . the toll has been tremendous. We cannot wait until 2025 for this problem to be solved. If cleaning the drains and inspecting the sewer drains will help, then why did it take so long to occur? We also cannot wait until August 4 for another meeting of the Bloomingdale Civic Association with DC Water. Homeowners, renters, business owners need help and information now!

I am asking you to call an emergency town hall meeting this week, to be followed by a DC council hearing in August, with representatives of all agencies that could provide immediate assistance with this crisis as well as offer short and long term solutions — the mayor, councilmember, Councilmember Graham (whose constituents in LeDroit Park have suffered, too), DDOT, DPW, DOH, DOEE, DCRA, and DC Water. This is not a new problem, and there should be ideas that have been previously considered, implemented or not, that can be put before the public. While DC Water has offered a Bloomingdale Action Agenda, it is the responsibility of DC government to assist their constituents and protect their safety and their property, and ensure that all agencies are performing properly in a timely manner.

Bloomingdale has become one of the most sought after neighborhoods in the DC real estate market, but I question any assertions that the increase in new homeowners has exacerbated this problem. It would seem something has happened very recently to cause this problem — whether it is clogged sewers, a breakdown in the infrastructure, or new construction further up the lines — previous storms have generally only caused flooding in the streets and not the back up in homes and business that we have witnessed in the last thirteen days. We need your help and leadership.

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Bill Raspberry
Donald Lief, wolfe.lief@gmail.com

Did I overlook any comments on his passing? Sorely missed, especially during these many months of turmoil in the Wilson Building. How good it would be to listen to his “conversations” with his favorite cabbie.

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Nightlife Industry and Residents’ Rights
Mark Rosenman, CPCAmark@verizon.net

Councilmember Jim Graham, as chair of the Committee on Human Services, recently held a hearing on his proposed Omnibus Alcohol Beverage Regulation Amendment Act of 2012. Sections of this bill, applauded by industry and “nightlife” representatives, were strongly opposed by representatives from various ANC and civic groups. Yet, the Councilmember repeatedly declined to consider changing any parts of his draft since they were recommendations from a task force that he had convened. As currently proposed, the amendments would bar protests by DC residents living more than 400 feet (less than most city blocks) from a new (or renewal) license applicant even if they were profoundly affected by its operation. This limit fails to recognize DC neighborhoods where residential streets sweep back from commercial corridors.

Drunken patrons screaming to friends on side streets as they look for their cars or while relieving themselves against the sides of homes, departing customers engaged in raucous chatter as they pass our bedrooms at 3:00 am, and street criminals looking for easy nightlife prey aren’t likely to observe that four-hundred-foot limit. Furthermore, even residents within that meager boundary would lose their rights if the Alcohol Board accepted a voluntary agreement endorsed by an ANC.

The amendments would also continue the Board’s practice of protecting applicants for additional licenses by allowing them to expand into new establishments without proper and reasonable scrutiny. Unlike today’s practices, records of alcohol violations and police incidents at currently-owned establishment(s) should be considered in determining whether or not an applicant is of “good character” and “fit for the responsibilities” of license. The bill still further protects the industry in denying residents a voice by refusing the right to protest a license transfer from an existing establishment to a new owner with a profoundly different business model, even if it represents significant change from the current operation and adversely impacts local residents. While the councilmember’s attempt to update ABRA’s regulations is to be applauded, the bill goes much too far in diminishing residents’ rights. The government of the District of Columbia needs to show that it cares as much for its people as it does for its businesses.

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Party Primaries
Lars H. Hydle, larshhydle@aol.com via mx.aol.com

I believe that a recent Supreme Court ruling prohibits states from messing with party primaries; that is, the parties can decide for themselves whether they want to conduct primaries only for members of their own party. In DC, our Home Rule Charter provides for closed primaries, limited to voters registered for the party holding the primary. Not sure what would happen if a DC party decided that it wanted to allow other voters, not registered in it, to vote in its primary.

Our present voting process, imposed by the Congress in our Home Rule Charter, helps our dominant party, the Democrats, to maintain its dominance. Most Democratic primaries are “tantamount,” as they used to say in the solid South, to election. Voters tend to register Democratic to have an effective role in choosing our leaders. Voters registered in the Republican or DC Statehood Green parties, or not registered in any party, have effectively no such role. Moreover, turnout in the party primaries is light; about 17 percent in the April 3 Democratic primary, and 35-40 percent in the 2010 Democratic primary. This means that DC politics are dominated, not just by Democrats, but by hyperpartisan Democrats who actually vote in primaries.

We should seriously consider other approaches. For example, in 2014 the DC Attorney General will be elected for the first time. The council’s Public Safety and Judiciary Committee, chaired by Councilmember Mendelson, proposed that the election to this office be nonpartisan. But the full council required that it be a partisan election. When the voters ratified this charter amendment in 2010, they had no opportunity to address the partisan issue separately. Thus an opportunity was lost to create within the DC government a nonpartisan check and balance against single-party rule. Ironically, the fact that this is a partisan office prevents the huge number of DC-resident federally employed attorneys from running for that office. It seems unlikely that the mayor and council would fix this problem themselves. DC residents may have to call on the Congress to do so.

[The Supreme Court decision that Lars refers to is probably California Democratic Party v. Jones, 2000, in which the court ruled unconstitutional California’s open primary system that allowed voters to vote in primaries regardless of party affiliation. However, the court ruled that it was “facially constitutional” in 2008, in Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party et al., to hold a “Louisiana” nonpartisan primary, or “jungle primary,” for local and states offices, in which all candidates run (labeled by political party, but not endorsed by political parties) and all voters vote, and in which the two top candidates advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation. — Gary Imhoff]

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Cleaning Up Scandals, Part 2
Harold Foster, Petworth, incanato@earthlink.net

As for my three cents’ worth on how to clean up our city’s political scandals, none of these directly remedies what appears to be ailing elected District government leadership right now. But they could (could, mind you) set in motion some of the reinvigoration of the talent pool for mayor and council that so many of us would like to see. If for no other reason than it would (well, might) give us more choices than the usual (ex-city council) suspects as viable candidates for mayor, by making it possible — see Number 3, below — for non-Democrats (and non-Republicans for that matter) to remain electorally viable in general elections in this town.

1) Self-denying ordinance. a) To run for an elective office, an incumbent must first resign his or her current elective office. And he or she must do so far enough in advance of the election to provide ample time for others to mount campaigns to fill the vacated position. b) And, before you ask: yes, this would apply to candidates in special elections to fill vacancies created “out of cycle” by the death, resignation or impeachment of sitting officeholders. 2) True independent candidates. Not just Democrats in drag. a) Anyone standing for office as an independent must have been registered as an independent in the District for at least 15 consecutive months before that. b) I originally proposed that independents must be so registered here for at least two years, but many of you here finally talked me down to fifteen months. 3) Majority, not just plurality, rules. a) To be elected, candidates must get a majority (50 percent plus one) of all votes cast for that office, not just more votes than anyone else who is running. b) We can either have run-off elections after first round elections in which no one candidate gets that majority. c) Or we can institute instant run-off voting (also known as alternative or single transferable voting) here.

Run-off voting would work this way: i) Instead of casting one vote for one candidate for an elective office, voters would rank the candidates by indicating their preference for all the candidates for that office. ii) Their preferred candidate gets first preference and so on down the list. iii) If no one candidate got more than 50 percent of the first preference ballots, the candidate with the smallest number of first preferences is dropped and her second preferences assigned to the remaining candidates. iv) This continues until one candidate has a majority of ‘preferences’ cast for that office. v) Believe me: I just made it sound a lot more complicated than it really is in practice. vi) I would add my usual reminder, now updated, about IRV\STV: if the city had IRV in 1978, it is highly likely Marion Barry would never have been elected mayor, and if the city had IRV in 2010, it is possible we would not be having the conversations we are having now about whether or not Vincent Gray is too damaged to remain in office as mayor.