The AG Jumps into the IG’s Game
Dear Fraudoholics:
One indication that the multiple investigations into political
corruption may be broader than we knew is the complaint that Attorney
General Irving Nathan filed on June 21 against the Peaceoholics and its
founders, Juahar Abraham and Ronald Moten,
http://www.dcwatch.com/govern/occ130621.htm.
Read both the complaint itself and Loose Lips’ summary of the case,
http://tinyurl.com/mm97tep. The Peacoholics
received massive funding from many government sources, including
noncompetitive administration grants and city council earmarks, during
the Williams and Fenty administrations, and questions from the public
about how those funds were spent have never been satisfactorily
answered. This complaint tugs at one corner of the cover over the
Peacoholics’ questionable funding and spending, a grant from the DC
Children and Youth Investment Trust, and seeks reimbursement. So far,
Abraham’s and Moten’s defense against the charges has not been strong —
it’s all a political attack by Mayor Gray because Moten was so prominent
in Adrian Fenty’s reelection campaign, and if Abraham had been buying
SUV’s for himself he wouldn’t have bought two that were the same color.
If they want to make a convincing defense case in the future, they need
to have a lawyer speak for them.
#####
An important article about a recurring subject was published by the
pseudonymous blog Titan of Trinidad,
http://www.titanoftrinidad.com/2013/06/mpd-hiding-most-crimes-from-public/.
Several years ago, there was widespread concern that the Metropolitan
Police Department was playing games with its crime reports and
statistics, underreporting crimes and lowering the classification of
crimes. The Titan of Trinidad site revisits this subject with a post
that says, "Last week, we reported on the violent assault on the
Metropolitan Branch Trail, in which a mob of fifteen persons attacked a
bicyclist without provocation, beating him so severely that his eye was
swollen shut. Over the next two days, we also noticed this crime went
unmentioned in MPD’s public crime reports and online crime map, and
wondered why. After all, MPD stated the attack was an aggravated assault
(a Part 1 offense by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting standard, and
the daily crime reports assure citizens that such reports contain ‘Part
1 serious’ offenses. Sadly, as with most assaults, citizens would have
no idea that the incident took place if they were to examine public
crime stats. As we tried to research this issue, we discovered other
alarming findings: 1) MPD only reports crime data on nine specific
offenses out of approximately one hundred fifty or so offense types, all
others are intentionally hidden from the public, and 2) MPD may be under
or misreporting the crimes to the public, and possibly in its annual FBI
crime statistics. Shockingly, not only does the DC Metropolitan Police
freely admit hiding a significant number of crime statistics from the
public, but double-down on that position by saying they do so for our
own good."
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
Education Reform in DC
Dorothy Brizill,
dorothy@dcwatch.com
After a long, deafening silence from the Gray administration and the
city council, education reform has now been placed on the front burner
by the District’s policymakers as the city prepares for local municipal
elections in 2014. On Thursday, June 4, Councilmember David Catania,
chairman of the council’s Education Committee, introduced seven
education reform bills that were drafted without any civic or community
input by a team of lawyers at the law firm of Hogan Lovells. As I noted
in themail on May 1, Catania obtained funding for the Hogan Lovells project from "a private philanthropist [Emmanual Friedman] who
‘offered to retain counsel at private expense to prepare a legislative
proposal for use’ by Catania and the committee." While the ink is barely
dry on the bills drafted by Hogan Lovells, Catania has scheduled a
series of council hearings over the next two weeks on those bills and
other education bills introduced by his council colleagues.
The first hearings are on July 3, 9:00 a.m., on Bill 20-312, the
"Unified Public Education Lottery Act of 2013," and Bill 20-313, the
"Comprehensive Planning and Utilization of School Facilities Act of
2013; July 8, 9:00 a.m., on Bill 20-314, the "Parent and School
Empowerment Act of 2013," and Bill 20-315, the "Public Education
Governance Improvement Act of 2013"; July 9, 9:00 a.m., on Bill 20-310,
the "Individual School Accountability Act of 2013," Bill 20-311, the
"Focused Student Achievement Act of 2013," Bill 20-328, the "Increasing
Access to High Quality Educational Opportunities Act of 2013," and Bill
20-41, the "Reading Development and Grade 3 Retention Act of 2013"; and
on July 11, 9:00 a.m., on Bill 20-309, the "Fair Student Funding and
School Based Budgeting Act of 2013." Government witnesses will testify
on all bills on July 2 at 9:00 a.m.
Last Thursday, June 20, Mayor Gray gave an "education policy address
on his vision and priorities for moving forward on public education
reform in the District" at Savoy Elementary School in Ward 8. Gray
delivered his eight-page, single-spaced speech,
http://tinyurl.com/ndwrry5, to an unusual
audience composed both of charter school advocates and Empower DC
protesters. The speech itself is short on specifics, and doesn’t
announce any new initiatives.
###############
You complained that nobody responded to your request for comments on
what is good in DC. I think people took your request to be just about
politics. Looking at life in general, I would say things are great.
Living in the U Street area (I used to cal it Meridian Foothills,
Realtors used to call it Dupont/Logan) offers many of the advantages of
West Side Manhattan, without the extreme density. We love:
1) spring and all the glorious flowers, and no need for heat or a/c;
2) being able to walk to most everything we need, or if necessary having
two subway lines and several bus lines within a few minutes’ walk; 3)
being able to walk to dozens of restaurants, many very good; 4) jazz,
jazz, jazz; 5) being able to walk to the Studio Theater; 6) fall, relief
from the often hot and humid summer, again usually no need for heat or
air conditioning; 7) winter, usually fairly mild of late; 8) excellent
long distance transportation options via plane, train, or car; 9)
world-class medical care, much of it within walking distance; 10)
Safeway, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter, a farmers' market, a Lancaster
County farm store, and soon Trader Joe's within walking distance; 11)
world-class museums, theaters, opera, and Library of Congress; 12) the
Smithsonian Folk Festival and many other festivals; 13) excellent and
improving safe trails and bikeways for cycling; 14) the political farce
played out daily on the Hill, and sometimes in the District Building,
with Improve and Capitol Steps for commentary: 15) a gorgeous park a few
blocks away, a park no longer controlled by the drug trade; 16) the fact
that 15th Street, NW, is no longer a boundary to no-man's land but
rather the entry to the booming 14th Street corridor.
Yes, aspects of DC government are lousy. Things like closing schools
and doing nothing with the buildings for years or closing the Tenleytown
Library before a contract was final for the new building, taking years
for road projects that should take weeks. But some things are working
very well these days, including street sweeping, trash and recycle
collection, DMV (except for driver license exam waiting times), the new
libraries, many rebuilt schools, some excellent schools (sadly mostly
west of Rock Creek), fantastic continuing education opportunities with
things like the local campuses of Johns Hopkins and the University of
California system, all sorts of think tanks offering discussions of
various kinds. . . .
We are retired, and plan to stay put as long as possible. The Dupont
Circle Village will help that. We have looked at all sorts of places
where friends have retired. Practically all require the use of a car, so
when you can no longer drive you are housebound unless others will help.
Most are in places that do not even have taxi services. Yes, the Ozarks
are lovely and you may have the largest bridge club in the world, but if
the nearest grocery store is twenty-five miles away it sucks. Orcas
Island is fabulous, but if you have a medical emergency it better be
when the ferry is running.
###############
An Encouraging Aspect of the City
Lisa Swanson,
melatar@yahoo.com
This one’s easy: The DC public library system. The new and the newly
refurbished buildings are beautiful; they’re quiet and comfortable. I
use Petworth and Shaw mostly. Books and movies are available for the
easy browsing, requests are easily made online and fulfilled with a
timely E-mail notice. Staff is outstanding: I returned a book with a
random photograph in the pages. (It had been there when I got the book
and I left it in.) A librarian tracked me down to see whether I wanted
the picture back. Service plus.
###############
DC's Corrupt Officials, and Those of NY State
Tom Grahame,
tgrahame@mindspring.com
It is pretty amazing to have three recent city council members in
jail or just having pled guilty to various violations of law, with
further legal issues to be determined regarding the current mayor. That
is a n unreasonably high percentage of our elected officials. That said,
I was quite surprised to find, in a recent article in the Economist,
that, "Between 1976 and 2010, 2,522 elected New York state officials
were convicted of corruption. One in 11 state lawmakers who left office
between 1999 and 2010 did so because of misconduct or criminal charges.
. . ."
Apparently the reason that so many politicians act with such impunity
in NY State is that, "The Board of Elections lacks the staff to enforce
regulations or investigate problems,"
http://tinyurl.com/low3vls. Therefore, it
seems to follow that to avoid the chronic NY State condition, we need to
have adequate policing and prosecutorial capabilities in DC so that
politicians will pay strict attention to laws. Surely these
investigative and prosecutorial capabilities matter more than whatever
new ethics updates the Council adopts?
###############
Constituent Services Fund and Participatory
Budgeting
Richard Layman,
rlaymandc@yahoo.com
A constituent services fund isn't prima facie a bad idea. Just change
the way that moneys are given out. I recommended that instead of the
councilmember/staff doling out the dough, that instead a "participatory
budgeting" technique be employed instead. PB gives the power to citizens
to set priorities and choose what to fund.
In short, the solution to lack of democracy is to add back democracy
and participation, not to eliminate it,
http://www.participatorybudgeting.org,
http://tinyurl.com/kzxymjg.
###############
Addiction to Automobiles
Paul Basken,
paul@basken.com
Following your logic, Gary, it's not an addiction if those who are
addicted can't acknowledge it's an addiction. Hey, it took quite a long
time on tobacco, with lots of angry denialism, so why should this be any
different.
###############
War on Cars — (Still) Not Always Seen That Way
Gabe Goldberg, gabe at gabegold dot com
[In themail, June 19] Gary Imhoff wrote, "If you present an article
that speaks of driving as an addiction, as dependence that has to be
broken, and celebrates what it sees as the ‘one-family car Americans
grew up with’ as beig ‘under assault’ as evidence that there is no war
on cars, what would it take to convince you that the media are waging a
war on cars?"
Nice spin, inflexible as usual. The article's point is that LA is
willingly/enthusiastically changing. Did you read citizen quotes? If
that historically car-centric region can change, surely so can DC (as
Fairfax County is changing). Your blind opposition to change is the
pointless, one-sided, and doomed war — channeling entrenched
interests/opinions threatened and enraged by change.
And Colorado changes too: "It is, in other words, an average highway.
But not for long. Work has begun on an upgrade for US 36 that will
incorporate a special fast lane for high-occupancy vehicles, bus rapid
transit service, an electronic toll system for single-occupant cars and
a bike path. It is, in other words, a highway designed to encourage
people to drive less,"
http://tinyurl.com/lsw3xwc.
Disclosure: I drive, live in Fairfax County, am unlikely to bike into
DC, find Metro relatively inconvenient, and find some DC traffic/parking
policies/practices inconvenient if not hostile. I'm just put off by your
rigidity on this and other matters. Not everything is zero-sum math or
media/government conspiracy.
###############
The Key to Rebooting Our Faltering Congress
Is. . .
Len Sullivan,
lsnarpac@verizon.net
. . . first, for NARPAC to get its own web site address right (themail,
June 19). Please visit us at
http://www.narpac.org/reboot and read our
kickoff materials lamenting a hopelessly outdated Congress, using a
226-year old operating system. As we suggested in themail last week, if
you think we're going in the right direction, please leave us a
constructive comment, spread the word to your I-friends, and if so
inclined, drop something in our tin cup. We — and you — need all the
help we can muster. We will expand our web site as you inspire us.
###############
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