Sequester in Panem
Dear Capitol Residents:
The NBC News Budget Watch column has a warning for the District of
Columbia: "Sequester Storm Gathers Over DC Economy,"
http://tinyurl.com/ayqe3kt. "With half of the
roughly $85 billion in cuts targeting the Pentagon, the impact will be
heavily concentrated in DC, Virginia, and Maryland, where defense
spending accounted for about 10 percent of the three states’ combined
economies in 2010, according to a report last month from Wells Fargo
economists Mark Vitner and Michael Brown." The sequester cuts are only a
tiny fraction of the federal budget, but they are going to be made as
painful as possible in order to put pressure on Congress to raise taxes.
But targeting the DC metropolitan area won’t outrage the rest of
America, and it won’t result in a lot of sympathy for DC. The economic
pain in DC and suburban Maryland and Virginia is more likely to elicit
an overwhelming sentiment of "good riddance" and "about time." The
relative good times being enjoyed by this area during the tough economy
being endured by the rest of the nation for the past few years have not
engendered warm feelings toward the capitol. It has, instead, created
the feeling that DC is the Capitol of Panem in The Hunger Games,
an exploitative, repressive, and unfairly rich clique of rulers rather
than of public servants.
If the point of the sequester is to create economic pain in the
nation, but it really isn’t big enough to do that, it has to be
manipulated to strike at the government programs that Americans want
most. Releasing thousands of illegal aliens from ICE custody fits the
bill. Furloughing bureaucrats in DC doesn’t.
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Must reading: Eric P. Newcomer, "DC Waging War Against Drivers,"
http://washingtonexaminer.com/d.c.-waging-war-against-drivers/article/2522783;
Marc Fisher, "Gun Deaths, Violent Crime Overall Are Down in District and
US, But Reasons Are Elusive,"
http://tinyurl.com/cjzhhwk
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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You Say Sequester, I Call Bushwah
Star Lawrence,
jkellaw@aol.com
Want to know how this dumb show is playing out here in the flyovers
(Arizona)? For laughs. I liked what Jay Leno’s writers said — Girl
Scouts will now have to sell meth instead of cookies. I guess it’s true
— if it doesn’t happen to Washington, it didn’t happen. Everyone just
took a 2 percent so-called "cut," we have lost jobs, our malls are
boarded up . . . all the strutting around and threatening in the world
does not scare most of us.
And — might I ask — why are our leaders, as they like to call
themselves, setting about to hurt the American people, as they like to
call us, as much as possible. I thought their job was the opposite.
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This bike tyranny is *?!.
DC is taking catering to bicyclists way too much. There will
definitely be a backlash come next election.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Hollywood on the Potomac
Book Signing with Author Mike Canning, March 5
George Williams;
George.Williams2@dc.gov
Author Mike Canning discusses and signs his new book, Hollywood on
the Potomac: How the Movies View Washington, DC on Tuesday, March 5,
7:00 p.m., at Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library. The book
examines more than fifty motion pictures of the sound era and reveals
how Washington has been treated as subject, setting, and background.
Proceeds from the book sale support the Library’s Summer Reading
Program. The event is sponsored by the Friends of Southeast Library. The
Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library is located at 901 G Street,
NW, near the Metro Center and Gallery Place Metro Stations.
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