Dear Viewers:
For decades, I’ve used the phrase “the least objectionable program”
to describe what I was looking for when I searched for what to watch on
television. Wikipedia provided me with a reminder of where I got the
phrase originally. “In an article ‘Why You Watch What You Watch When You
Watch’ (published in TV Guide in 1971), [Paul L.] Klein [an
executive of audience measurement at NBC] explained that viewers consume
the medium of television rather than television shows, treating the
medium as the end of their consumption itself rather than using the set
as a means to access specific programs they like the way they might
choose a book from a shelf to access the story within. Since the
introduction of television, the same percentage of sets are in use on,
say, a Thursday evening at a certain hour, year after year, regardless
of what content is broadcast. This is because unlike the way people use
books, museums, or the cinema as means of consuming desired content,
audiences consume television, the medium, as the desired object. TV
viewers turn the set on, deciding to ‘watch television,’ and then seek
out something to watch from what is available, flipping around, not
until they find ‘something they like’ — because television programming
is in fact very rarely satisfying, and viewers rarely watch anything
they actually like — but until they find something that doesn’t offend
them enough to make them flip to the next channel. (Viewers almost never
turn off the set as a result of finding nothing tolerable and judging
every program available boring or otherwise objectionable. Viewers
commonly watch programs they describe later as unbearable, everything
else on being even more intolerable. A more common response to a whole
spectrum of equally unendurable choices than choosing to abandon the
medium is to continue to flip frequently until new choices become
available.) Thus, for programmers of television channels, Klein
recommended understanding that audience attraction was a matter not of
pleasing the greatest number of viewers but of offending the fewest
(driving the fewest away to the competitors who may repulse them less).
The television audience is in a kind of partial trance. A network will
do better worrying less about not giving an audience enough to like, to
be surprised and delighted by, and to engage their attention, than about
avoiding, as Klein said, ‘disturbing their reverie’ with something that
causes them to change the channel. Thus, even as channel choices
proliferate alongside numerous easily accessed out-of-schedule viewing
options, successful television programs remain, as they have always
been, formulaic, cliche, ‘instantly familiar,’ predictable, and
monotonous in tone.”
What brought this to mind was the quandary presented by April’s
primary, that Larry Lesser discusses in his message below. How do you
apply the theory of “the least objectionable program” to the city’s
politics? How do you choose which channel to switch to, or whether it’s
time for you to switch at all? Perhaps, I’d suggest, the situation has
changed in politics the way it has in television programming. We’re not
limited anymore to switching among the limited choices that programmers
present to us. If we don’t like what’s being broadcast at any particular
time, we can change to any of the choices available on Netflix, Hulu,
Amazon, or cable on demand channels. DC voters choose among the
Democratic candidates as though those are the only options available.
They act as though the winner of the Democratic primary will also be the
winner of the general election, so the Democratic primary is decisive.
I’d suggest, if there’s nothing you like on any of the broadcast or
cable channels, maybe there’s a better alternative. If there’s nothing
you like among the Democratic candidates, maybe there’s a candidate from
another party or an independent who won’t be just the least
objectionable candidate, but the objectively better candidate.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
To continue my comments on the major Democratic mayoral candidates
that began with Muriel Bowser in the last issue of themail, I am
focusing on Jack Evans in this issue. Jack Evans is the longest serving
member of the city council — twenty-two years. He was first elected in
1991 in a special election for the Ward 2 council seat to replace John
A. Wilson, who had been elected chairman of the council. For most of his
tenure on the council, Evans, a fiscal conservative, has been the
chairman of the Committee on Finance and Revenue. During the Control
Board years, Evans and his committee worked with the Board to turn
around the District’s finances. Evans is considered to be an expert on
the intricate details of the city’s budget and finances, but recently he
has been criticized for providing poor council oversight of the office
of the Chief Financial Officer, which has been embroiled in a series of
scandals (e.g., among others, the awarding of the lottery
contract and the embezzlement of $31 million by Harriette Walters). He
is a member of the DC delegation that visits the Wall Street bond-rating
agencies annually.
Evans is not a full-time councilmember. Currently, he holds the
position “of counsel” in the law firm of Patton Boggs, which provides
legal services to the DC government and also lobbies the DC government
on behalf of its clients. Evans’ salary at Patton Boggs is $190,000,
which eclipses his council salary of approximately $125,000. During his
early years on the council, Evans was a law partner at the firm of Baker
and Hostetler. For nearly ten years, beginning in 1999, he also served
as the registered agent in DC for an insurance company based in
Columbus, Ohio, Central Benefits Mutual Insurance Company, that paid him
$50,000 a year. Evans has been an ardent supporter of the position that
work on the council is and should be part-time; he refuses to
acknowledge any conflict between his work at the law firm and his
council duties, but he also refuses to make public enough details
regarding his clients or work at Patton Boggs in order for the public to
be able to judge for itself whether there are any conflicts of interest.
Jack has also been accused of other ethical lapses. For eleven years,
he controlled a political action committee, Jack PAC, established in
1993. It received donations from deep-pocketed individuals, including
lobbyists, developers, and businessmen, who were doing business with the
city. He used the funds from Jack PAC to pay personal expenses including
restaurant meals, wedding gifts, vacation travel, first-row Washington
Nationals season tickets ($12,960), and even $6,772 for the travel
expenses of a former girlfriend who accompanied him to China when he
visited as part of an official delegation from DC. Evans has also been
widely criticized for misusing his constituent services fund, especially
with regard to buying tickets to various sports events. From 2002
through 2011, Evans’ constituent services fund spent $135,897 on tickets
to the Wizards, the Washington Nationals, and the Washington Kastles
tennis matches. Moreover, when pressed, Evans could not provide a list
of District residents who may have received any of the tickets. Given
that the general intent and purpose of a councilmember’s constituent
services fund is to help DC residents who are in dire need (e.g.,
with food, shelter, and funeral expenses), complaints about Evans’
expenditures have been filed with the DC Office of Campaign Finance,
which is supposed to oversee the use of constituent services funds, but
the OCF has declined to take any actions.
Evans has been a council supporter and close friend of every major
developer in Washington. Contributions to his political campaigns and
constituent services fund detail their support of him. In return, Evans
has been an ardent supporter of every major capital project in the
District, and has prided himself on being a dealmaker. He has proudly
claimed that, “but for me, this (fill in the project) wouldn’t have
gotten done.” He has claimed major credit for the new Walter Washington
convention center, the new Marriott Marquis convention center hotel, the
Washington Nationals baseball stadium, and the Verizon Center. At one
time, he even tried to broker a deal to turn the old Woodward and
Lothrop store at 11th and F Streets, NW, into an opera house and home
for the Washington Opera. In the coming months, it is clear that Evans
will use his council position to facilitate the land swap and municipal
financing needed to construct a soccer stadium in southwest for DC
United. Evans’ critics argue that he spends little or no time promoting
less grand projects, such as affordable housing or business projects
that promote small businesses. As a result of Evans’ largesse, the DC
government is fast approaching its legally mandated debt ceiling, and in
the near future will not be able to borrow money for worthy capital
projects.
Every ten years, following the census, the boundaries of the city’s
eight wards have to be redrawn to account for population shifts. For
nearly two years, in anticipation of the redistricting that would occur
following the 2010 census, Evans had large maps hanging in his private
council office showing the boundaries of Ward 2 redrawn to shift Shaw
and its largely black and poor neighborhoods to Ward 6. Jack then
lobbied to be appointed to the three-member council committee (along
with Mendelson and Michael Brown) that oversaw and developed the new
ward boundaries. As a result of his efforts, the residents of Shaw are
now in Ward 6 along with Capitol Hill and the southwest waterfront, and
Ward 2 is now comprised of the mostly white upscale neighborhoods of
Logan Circle, Dupont Circle, downtown, and Georgetown.
###############
Save McMillan Park, Stop the Surplussing
Daniel Goldon Wolkoff
amglassart@yahoo.com
What is that mysterious place with the concrete silos on North
Capitol? McMillan was the first integrated park enjoyed by the city from
the early 1900’s to World War II. It is on the National and District
Registries of Historic Places, and part of the Senate Parks plan for the
National Mall. You can read the National Register of Historic Places
nomination at
http://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/13000022.html. The plan for an
“Emerald Necklace” of green outdoor recreation was never realized east
of 16th Street, where the city provides one fifth of the park land than
it lavishes on the privileged Upper NW section. McMillan is a hybrid of
Clean Water Utility and Olmsted designed park. People enjoyed meeting,
taking a stroll, sports, concerts and the breezy sunset vistas, even
sleeping out on hot summer nights.
As the federal government felt that DC’s water system was threatened
by sabotage during World War II, it fenced off the site in 1941. The
engineering miracle that saved DC from disease and provided safe water
was converted to a “fast filtration” system using more chemicals in
1986, and the federal government sold McMillan to the District of
Columbia for over $9 million. The Department of Interior wanted to
protect the DC Reservoir and keep the site as a “green space” by placing
restrictive covenants on the sale. Since 1986, for over twenty-eight
years, the DC government has robbed the people of the use and enjoyment
of twenty-five acres of desperately needed outdoor recreation park land.
They kept up a barbed-wire-topped fence surrounding our park. We own it,
and it should be reopened and redeveloped according the principals of
creative, adaptive reuse that guide the international environmental
movement of sustain ability from Paris to Istanbul, and from Seattle to
the Highland in New York City. Instead, Mayor Gray’s VMP development
plan for McMillan will demolish the twenty acres of underground water
filtration galleries, and over-urbanize the site with fifty buildings,
including thirteen-story condos. The community struggle to Save McMillan
Park, preserving the Olmsted designed surface park and existing twenty
acres underground, creates the exciting potential for large scale
“indoor agriculture” and a family fish network. With proven vertical
indoor growing technology we could convert the McMillan/Olmsted Park
caverns to a fully functional, local food production facility, making it
a truly sustainable site. Imagine superior organic fresh fruit,
vegetables and family farmed fish, freshly produced right here in DC ,
no longer trucked from California, Florida, and Mexico. Please see this
fascinating video on the vertical farming process at
http://youtu.be/ILzWmw53Wwo
We need McMillan for arts, urban agriculture, a Glen-Echo-style
community education, and cultural campus, concerts, and music festivals.
We can train young people and the underemployed to gain healthy careers
in building trades restoring the historic structures, and start a
rehabilitation/renovation service community youth corps. The potential
for benefit to DC and the nation is unlimited. We have to stop Mayor
Gray from “surplussing” the land to VMP, the private development
conglomerate that does not need the subsidy of millions more in public
money. Say no to the “give away” of our billion dollar asset. Call your
city councilmembers and demand our park for our needs, no “surplus.” See
http://www.friends-of-mcmillan-park.org to
help start a transparent community based process for our park, our
families, and our kids.
###############
Open Letter to the DC Public Charter School
Board
Erich Martel, retired DCPS high school teacher), ehmartel
at starpower dot net
On Thursday, March 6, the DC Council Education Committee is conducted
an oversight hearing on the DC Public Charter School Board (DCPCSB) and
DC public charter schools. In response to questions submitted by the
Council Education Committee, the DCPCSB submitted responses, which are
posted at
http://dccouncil.us/budget/2015/education. For the past several
years, I have noticed that, as cohorts of charter high school students
advance each year from ninth grade to twelfth grade and final
graduation, their numbers drop, with some losing more than 50 percent of
their starting enrollment, sending most to DCPS, which cannot reject a
school-age resident. Some charter schools have a particularly low
percentage of male students in grade ten (the only high school grade for
which gender reports are available, the most recent being 2011).
During the February 26 Education Committee’s DCPS oversight hearing,
Councilmember Catania reported that, among African-American students,
the male graduation rate was 17 percentage points below the female rate;
and among Latino students, the male rate was 13 percentage points lower
than the female rate. He characterized these gaps as “unacceptable” and
noted that none of the witnesses came prepared to discuss this problem.
It seems logical to expect that DCPCSB Executive Director Scott Pearson
and Board of Director Chairman John McKoy should provide the Education
Committee with graduation data broken out by school and gender and
discuss solutions for significant gaps.
Since these privileges remain largely unnoticed and unreported behind
the publicity barrage of selectively reported, out-of-context data, this
is a good time to specify and request the data from the charter board’s
executive director. Until complete data are made public, the council
should entertain no increases in charter school funding. The council
should request, and the public charter school board provide, the
following information: 1) the numbers of students transferred out of
each charter high school each year, by grade level, gender and
destination; 2) the graduation gap between male and female students for
each charter high school for 2011, 2012, and 2013; 3) Thurgood Marshall
Academy’s last three graduation cohorts or classes (2011-2013) were 31
percent male when they were in tenth grade. What was the male-female
size, when they were in ninth grade and when they graduated? Has the
Public Charter School Board allowed Thurgood Marshall to set a quota on
the maximum number of African-American male students that are allowed to
continue past ninth grade; 4) the numbers of students admitted into
cohorts after the grade nine enrollment audit, by gender; 5) the numbers
of repeat ninth graders in each charter high school, by gender (it
appears that charter high schools have very few repeat ninth grade
students); 6) when the Public Charter School Board aggregates the data
of all charter schools, why does it omit the data of schools that have
been closed; 7) why is a school like Maya Angelou (Evans and Shaw)
allowed to switch back and forth between listing students by grade level
and then as ungraded; 8) what measures does the PCSB take to ensure that
teachers’ grades are not changed by school administrators? Has the DC
PCSB investigated any reports of grade changes? If so, where are the
reports? Did the DC PCSB investigate the allegations that teachers were
pressured to raise grades at Friendship Tech Prep Charter School? The DC
PCSB received mathematics teacher Caleb Rossiter’s letter of
resignation. Please report what action it took. 9) Does the PCSB have a
position on students getting credit for short-cut courses like credit
recovery? How many graduates per school needed at least one credit
recovery course in order to graduate and receive a high school diploma?
How many did not? 10) what were the last three years of test results on
the SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement, and International Baccalaureate exams;
11) why are lists of graduates per school not publicly posted? A high
school diploma is a public document attesting that a student has met the
requirements for high school graduation. Are high school teachers
allowed to review graduation lists? What steps does the PCSB take to
ensure that diploma recipients have met SBOE requirements? 12) what is
the teacher turnover rate for each charter school? What is the rate of
classroom teachers teaching grades and classes they are certified to
teach and have had a major or minor in college? How many classes, by
subject, are supervised by paraprofessionals or out-of-field teachers?
How many classes are primarily “blended learning” classes? 13) Why are
charter school salaries and benefits not publicly posted on Public Body
Information? What is the reason why these schools that are funded out of
public revenues are not publicly posted?
###############
What’s an Undecided Voter to Do?
Larry Lesser,
lblesser@aol.com
The incumbent mayor has governed during a pretty good period for the
District, but he’s disqualified from being reelected because it looks
like he cheated — I mean seriously cheated — in his winning campaign
four years ago. I realize he’ll be getting much more due process before
it’s official, but the there’s a very dark shadow on his tenure; a
darker shade of Gray.
Now we hear from Dorothy Brizill and others that Muriel Bowser’s
record doesn’t show that she would make a competent leader for our city.
I haven’t heard much that’s positive about Jack Evans and I know very
little about Tommy Wells. What I know about Vincent Orange also isn’t
very positive.
So much for the councilmembers, except Catania. Hmmm. Interesting.
What about the guy new to politics — Shallal? Also interesting.
I’m still undecided but I intend to vote for someone by the time
November rolls around.
###############
The Zoning Issue in themail
Dan Gamber, Dupont Circle,
daniel@gamber.net
The zoning rewrite has been going on for years, and has involved many
community meetings. I have been at several. Stop telling people
otherwise.
###############
Zoning Matters, a New DC Blog
Alma Gates, ahg71139aol.com
For the past seven years, the DC Office of Planning has been writing
a new set of zoning regulations for the city known as the Zoning
Regulation Review (ZRR). The ZRR is regarded by many as a complete
revision and reorganization rather than a review of the zoning code, and
the ZRR proposes some unwelcome changes to the way zoning is approached
currently in the District of Columbia.
Sue Hemberger, who has reviewed and weighed all sides of the
arguments on the ZRR proposals, recently created Zoning Matters, a blog
about zoning/politics in Washington, DC.
For those who have been unable or unwilling to comb through the 980
pages of text, and formulate the issues of concern presented in the ZRR,
this blog is a welcome and relatively accessible way into the issues. It
can be found at
http://www.dczoning.blogspot.com/.
###############
InTowner
March Issue Content Uploaded
Peter Wolff,
intowner@intowner.com
The March issue content can be viewed at
http://www.intowner.com,
including the issue PDF in which will be found the primary news stories
and museum exhibition reviews — plus all photos and other images. Not
included in the PDF but linked directly from the home page is Stephen A.
Hansen’s “What Once Was” feature — this month about the Galt family and
its Dupont Circle presence going back over 140 years.
This month’s lead stories include the following: 1) “DC Library
Trustees Select Architectural Team for the Long-Awaited Reconstruction
of MLK Central Library at Gallery Place”; 2) “Newly Formed Neighborhood
Group Seeks Ways to Curb Excessive Nightclub Noise”; 3) “HPRB Approves
Design Concept for Addition to Dupont Circle’s Historic Patterson
Mansion.” Also to be found on the web site pages are the “Reservations
Recommended” and “Food in the Hood” columns, along with the recent real
estate sales feature, which will be posted on Wednesday.
Our editorial explains our mayoral and at-large council member
endorsements for the April 1 Democratic primary election. Your thoughts
are welcome and can be sent by clicking the comment link at the bottom
of the web page or by E-mail to letters [at] intowner.com. The next
issue PDF will publish early in the morning of April 11, the second
Friday of the month, as usual. For more information, either send an
E-mail to newsroom[at]intowner.com or call 234-1717.
###############
CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Open House, Jobs Forum, Symposium on Poverty,
Perez Rauh Lecture, Auction, March 22, April 4
Joe Libertelli,
jlibertelli@udc.edu
Thanks to the awesome support of our alumni and friends, over 180
people are now signed up for our Law Day Open House. It is this
Saturday, March 22, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. But there’s still room
for a few more! Register for that at
http://www.law.udc.edu/event/LawDaySpring14
Immediately after the Law Day Open House, at 3:00 p.m. on March 22,
the School of Law will be hosting a public forum entitled Job Creation:
to Redress Income Inequality and Reinvigorate Our Communities, featuring
Congressman John Conyers and NAACP Washington Bureau Director Hilary
Shelton. Reverend Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus has also just
confirmed. Garland Nixon (of national Fox TV and WPFW) will moderate.
This forum is the first in a series that will focus on specific
legislation proposed to address issues relating to low-income,
working-class, and other regular folks — the 99 percent. It is being
organized in conjunction with our local Pacifica radio network
affiliate, WPFW, and is cosponsored by a number of local and regional
organizations. For more information and to register, please go to:
http://www.law.udc.edu/event/JOBS
On Friday, April 4, we have a series of public events all on one day.
Our law review annual symposium, Renewing the War on Poverty 50 Years
Later begins at 11:30 am. For more info and to register, go to
http://www.law.udc.edu/event/2014Symposium The 22nd annual Joseph L.
Rauh, Jr., Lecture will serve as the capstone address for the symposium.
For info on past Rauh Lectures — last year’s was given by Sen. Elizabeth
Warren and the one before that by Hon. Sonia Sotomayor — see
http://www.law.udc.edu/?page=RauhLecture. This year’s Rauh Lecture
will be delivered by US Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez at approximately
7:00 p.m. There is a separate registration for that at
http://www.law.udc.edu/event/Rauh22Perez A reception will follow the
Rauh Lecture, which will, in turn, be followed by our annual Summer
Public Interest Auction, a rollicking event that raises funds to provide
financial support to all our first year law students at nonprofit,
government agency, and judicial placements. For info on that program see
http://www.law.udc.edu/?page=Fellowships.
###############
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