Progressive Review ARCHIVES
Progressive Review ARCHIVES
FEBRUARY 2006 LEO ALEXANDER, DC WATCH - I remember when I first came to the District to work for WRC-TV4 as a news reporter in 1995. I wanted to know how did this community reelect a man after that famous bust at the Vista Hotel. I knew, because of my experience as a black man in this country and a child of the movement, that when the government is investigating you and the majority of the white community doesn't like you, then you must be doing something right. I couldn't wait to get here to witness it myself -- what is it about this one brother? After attending my first Mayor Barry press conference I knew the deal. Regardless of his personal weaknesses; i.e., drug addiction, women, taxes, etc., to me, his proud legacy will remain that he tried to create a level playing field for his community. In spite of everything, black folks simply know Marion Barry will never sell them out. LEA ADAMS, DC WATCH - What if Mother Theresa were robbed at gunpoint by an orphan she picked off a Calcutta dung heap? Or Nelson Mandela, by a black South African kid? What if you gave a job to a poor kid who then robbed you at gunpoint? If you spent your entire adult life trying to help downtrodden, underprivileged people you chose to live among, where's the punch line in being hurt, in feeling betrayed? If you can imagine yourself in those shoes, how would you feel?. . . Barry's flaws speak for themselves and, unlike most of ours, are fair game. But the fact is, his is a record I couldn't match, and I doubt that many of us would dare to try. He stays his course while carrying some very heavy baggage. We could learn from that if we spent less time pointing fingers and more examining our own lives and the common ground we could be cultivating. We all fall down, and some get more help rising than others. Marion Barry gets up every day to face internal and external struggles that would have taken a less courageous man out of the fight. I believe he is motivated by a genuine commitment to help people emerge from miseries he has experienced, and to be a role model for people who in many cases have never had one. . . . http://dcwatch.com CALVIN H. GURLEY, DC EXAMINER LETTER - Some still don't know (and others will not offer the facts) that the newly elected Mayor Barry inherited from the federal government an out-of-control pension program, a large jail and the D.C. Superior Court system, which were funded entirely by the federal government during Mayor Walter Washington's tenure. Congress refused to do the responsible thing. It had three choices: Finance the state-obligated systems, give D.C. its full federal payment or allow a commuter tax. Congress did nothing but let Barry take the financial blame. Mayor Tony Williams has not yet won my test for running a city without destroying the middle-class residents, destroying a hospital, closing vocational training schools and cutting funds from the city university. Williams is marauding the residents' pocketbooks instead going toe-to-toe with the U.S. Congress for a full federal payment. http://dcexaminer.com/articles/2006/01/31/opinion/threads/64threads20.txt DUNCAN SPENCER, THE HILL - Barry is like a crumbling but spectacular building; rather than tear it down, we should remember and celebrate its part in city history. . . Those who remember Barry on the rise . . . remember the sparkling speaker who genuinely cared for people who were disregarded and pushed around by police and the ruling cadre of older white men, the D.C. commissioners. They remember the dashiki, the marches, the protests, Barry the firebrand of the school board, a man who built his political base on black pride and the demand for jobs. It was those two, the pride and the belief that a job was almost a right for D.C. citizens, that won allegiance of the thousands. For above all, Barry was concrete, down-to-earth - "in your face," as they used to say. He promised jobs and he gave them, making the public schools, the University of D.C., the Department of Recreation and others into job banks. The model was Barry's famous summer jobs program, a pure giveaway. At the height of his hiring, close to 40,000 were on board, about one-third more than required. . . By whatever means, Barry achieved one goal. He created a black middle class like that of no other city. And he drew world attention to his creation. In Washington, that class ran things and Barry was a national symbol of black mastery. When the Washingtonian magazine (which has overwhelmingly white readership) ran a cover picture showing two scoops of chocolate ice cream on top of one of vanilla and the line "Chocolate City," it was like homecoming for his grand ideas. Much good came along with the vast expenditures and the inevitable mini-scandals of a bloated, under-employed bunch of paper shufflers. The jobholders and their sons and daughters became solid middle-class taxpayers. Barry mistook one thing -- he meant to cement his own political base with D.C. jobholder voters, but his lament in his last years was that his people took the money and ran - to the suburbs. Such a mass of city employees left for Prince George's County (Barry's estimate was 70 percent) that it became known as "Ward 9.". . . Through it all, Barry enriched his cronies, his constituents, everyone but himself, to the lasting shame of the smooth men in good suits who preyed on his goodwill and got themselves rich. For him there was to be no soft landing, no comfortable university tenure, no stocks and bonds. He ran for Ward 8 because he needed the money. Least careful of men, Barry used only the flimsiest excuses "my redemption," etc. when he was embarrassed by his excesses. He seemed not really to care about his public image; his private life was distressingly public. Yet he was and is able to maintain the goodwill of many voters; even in this time of clear diminishment, he was able to hurl a populist wrench into the plans of the baseball developers, making himself and his unique but outdated brand of politics the center of attention. Attention came again in an empty hallway in Anacostia, but to an old man with his bag of groceries. Youthful thugs, the indulged wastrels he had always championed, held a gun; he looked like nobody, an easy mark.
DC PLANS DRIVERS LICENSE THAT WILL SPY ON USERS DC EXAMINER - Privacy advocates are alarmed by a D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles initiative to embed SmarTrip computer chips inside every new D.C. driver's license, making it easier than ever to track D.C. residents on their travels through the transit system. The DMV will spend $830,000 a year to install SmarTrip chips in all driver's licenses and identification cards starting in October 2008. . . SmarTrip does, however, provide Metro and the government with a system to follow users, though Hazel said the agency "has no intention to track [a] person's movements on the Metro system." People who read this also read: "If you're paying your fare with it, they're going to have the ability to know by name who entered each Metro station at what time and who exited a Metro station at what time," said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "That can be used by the government to track your comings and goings. It's an absolutely awful idea." Metro's policy is to release Smar-Trip information to law enforcement purposes, or at a cardholder's request. . . Melissa Ngo with the D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center said D.C. is "setting up an infrastructure where the government can track you all the time."
WHY BORF MATTERS ONE OF THE CURIOSITIES of the collapse of the First American Republic has been why it happened so quietly. Part of this is due to the entropy of liberalism much as occurred in pre-Nazi Germany. After all, when the best the opposition can come up with is Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi you can't be too surprised at the success of the creeping coup. Part of it is due to the unprecedented role of propaganda in our society with major mind-warping by television still hardly a half century old. Part of it is due to the willingness of the young to accept so easily the values foisted upon them by politicians, the media and corporations including a definition of cool and hip that comes straight from advertising agencies rather than from rebellion. Part of it has been due to the extraordinary increase in police state procedures. In any case, there have probably been few times in human history when one was more likely to find a memory of rebellion among the aging than its manifestation among the young. Thus, despite being overwhelmingly opposed to the Iraq war, the latter have been unable to even stage a decent march on Washington. There are, of course, exceptions, among the most striking being punk rock and the Critical Mass bike movement. It is not unusual that rebellion comes from artistic or off-beat places. A guitar or a bike can serve when words and organization fail. Another manifestation of rebellion is graffiti. Typically dismissed as just more adolescent misbehavior, graffiti is, almost by definition, a cry for attention by the weak. It usually, however, lacks a clear or even inferred political message. One striking exception involves the saga of Borf in Washington DC, the up-tight, narcissistic epicenter of post-constitutional and corporatic America. The graffiti assault by Borf has been predictably condemned in a city where a local councilman was almost successful at banning the young from music clubs even if they didn't drink. To use the capital's favorite condemnation, graffiti is 'inappropriate.' And so two years ago, the perp - or one of them - went to jail and peace was restored so the city could return to more important matters like ruining Iraq, finding more ways that campaign contributors can be rewarded for their kindnesses and ignoring the ecological crisis. But the Borfians have not gone away. They are presently having an art exhibit and last summer issued a manifesto via You Tube. What does this mean? Perhaps little or nothing, but there are too many echoes of earlier rebellions - including the Paris of the 1960s - to ignore. The following will help bring you up to date. WIKIPEDIA - John Tsombikos is a graffiti artist responsible for the "Borf" graffiti seen in and around Washington, DC during 2004 and 2005. This four letter word was ubiquitous around the Northwest quadrant of DC, and ranged from simple tagging to complete sentences to two-color stencils to a massive defacement on an overhead exit sign from the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge to Constitution Avenue. Tsombikos was arrested July 13, 2005 after tips from locals led police to his latest tag. His graffiti also appeared elsewhere, and was reported on in such places as in New York City, San Francisco, Rome, Italy, Raleigh, North Carolina and elsewhere in Europe. The Borf graffiti campaign attracted widespread attention without explaining its motivations. The prevalence of Tsombikos' tag revived the concerns commonly surrounding graffiti. Can graffiti be justified? Do tags have any significance other than the expression of juvenile narcissism? The questions of validity regarding the Borf tag remained unanswered until Tsombikos' arrest when the Washington Post released an article dedicated to Tsombikos. According to Tsombikos's mother and subsequent Borf communiques, both the nickname "Borf" and the Borf face were references to a close friend of Tsombikos who had committed suicide. . . Approximately four months after his arrest, Tsombikos appeared before the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, complete with paint-stained attire. . . On December 12, 2005, Tsombikos pleaded guilty to one count of felony destruction of property. He agreed to perform community service, cleaning up graffiti, and to pay $12,000 in restitution. Judge Leibovitz ordered him to stay out of the District except for court appearances and classes at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. On February 9, 2006, Tsombikos was sentenced to 30 days in the D.C. Jail, with an additional 17 months suspended, in addition to his community service and restitution. At an event in Dupont Circle after Borf's arrest, young people handed out free spray paint and anarchist pamphlets. The following was distributed as a "communiqué" at the event: "Borf is not caught. Borf is many. Borf is none. Borf is waiting for you in your car. Borf is in your pockets. Borf is running through your veins. Borf is naive. Borf is good for your liver. Borf is controlling your thoughts. Borf is everywhere. Borf is the war on boredom. Borf annihilates. Borf hates school. Borf is a four letter word for joy. Borf is quickly losing patience. Borf yells in the library. Borf eats pieces of shit like you for breakfast. Borf is digging a hole to China. Borf is bad at graffiti. Borf is ephemeral. Borf is invincible. Borf. Borf ruins everything. Borf runs near the swimming pool. Borf keeps it real. Borf writes you love letters. Ol' Dirty Bastard is Borf. Borf knows everything. Borf is in the water. Borf doesn't sleep. Borf systematically attacks the infrastructure of the totality. Borf is a foulmouth. Borf eats your homework. Borf brings you home for dinner. Borf is the dirt under your fingernails. Borf is the song that never ends. Borf gets down. Borf gets up. Borf is your baby. Borf is neither. Borf is good for your heart, the more you eat the more you. Borf is. Borf knows. Borf destroys. Borf is immortal. Borf pulls fire alarms. Borf scuffs the gym floor. Borf is looking through your mom's purse. Borf is M. Borf is the size of Alaska. Borf likes pizza. Borf is in general. Borf is X. Borf ain't nothin' to fuck with. Borf runs it. Borf has reflexes like a cat. Borf is immortal. Borf sticks gum under the desk. Borf is omnipotent. Borf is flawed. Borf is winning." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borf BORF BRIGADE VIDEO JULY 2006 - Recently, the press has made much hullaballoo on the capture of minor Borfist John Tsombikos. This member is henceforth purged. On October 22nd, 2003 our friend Borf hung himself from a basement pipe in a suburb of the nation's capital. This was not a solitary act. Over 30,000 people in the US alone fall victim to this conspiratorial violence. It is the 3rd leading killer of young people, ages 15-24, and outnumbers homicides 3 to 2. This epidemic cannot be medicated into remission. It is not a problem confined to our family bloodline. "Trouble at home" is not the only trigger for depression. People like [D.C.] Mayor Anthony Williams and developer Jim Abdo who maintain the gentri-fucking of our neighborhoods, establish 10 o'clock curfew laws targeting youth, ultimately deciding D.C.'s fate without the consent of its residents; as well as politicians and CEO's around the world - these are the conspirators who would rather see us fight their wars and work in their sweatshops than see us develop and build supportive communities and relationships. They would rather see homeless shelters be turned into condos and would rather profit off of our misery through the funding of programs that stifle our creativity and imagination than spend a dime on programs that empower youth and give us the tools to think independently. Given these offenses, would anyone be surprised that so many young people feel so worthless? The message is clear: Leurs actions systematiquement se rendent a la perpetuatien de notre isolement et notre condition de precarite'. These feelings of powerlessness and alienation, which are characteristics of living in an abusive culture, can be paralyzing and debilitating, leaving youth with few options. Either we can give up and self-destruct or realize our anger and frustration through property destruction and other anti-social acts. Graffiti for us was merely the expression of our frustration, an act in retaliation for Borf's destruction. We needed to make our discontent visible. We have destroyed countless thousands of dollars worth of property as have our Parisian counterparts and the frustrated youth of the world who are forced to make a decision to either fall or destroy that which is pushing. Rather than fall into quiet despair, we shall purple the proverbial nurple of the grey matter at hand. As our nurples have endured incessant purplings in untold schools, malls, courtrooms, office buildings and even while we walk home, we will no longer idly abide by bouts of unbearable purple nurpling. Today begins Operation: Twist & Shout. - WE TWIST, YOU SHOUT - Twist & Shout will make you uncomfortable. For every rush hour Metro delay, dropped cell phone call, jammed coin return, mysterious odor, Borf will be involved. We will reface every wall, rhyme on every stall and have the gall to have a blast. Borf is alive and well. How are you? BORF BRIGADE COMMUNIQUE A REACTION TO THE VIDEO BOB, OCTOBER 19, 2006 - What the B-Brigade do is actually creative. Consider the number of teenagers who kill their classmates, who kill each other by driving recklessly. Think about teenagers who feel compelled to hide their sexual desires or want of social acceptance because our patronizing society will not accept it from them at their age. Consider the effect that has. How many people do you think have social problems and suffer from depression? So many that it should be considered normal instead of abnormal in our society. . . In most suburban communities, the reality of a police state is quite apparent as the youth are punished for asserting independence during a transitional period in their lives. The US has taken a completely opposite road as the Europeans have in dealing with adolescence, and it reflects on how poorly we (the US) understand and deal with the developmental psychology of adolescence. I'd like to outline some policies which Europe has implemented which better allow the youth to come into their independence and responsibilities quicker and why this has made the youth in those countries substantially happier and healthier: 1. Age to drink beer and wine 16, Hard liquor 18. The most likely response from an American audience is that such a policy would lead to alcoholism and delinquency. This is far from the truth. In Europe, you can drink earlier, which also means you can go to bars and clubs at an earlier age. As a teen in America, you do not have the option of being openly independent. Most parents frown upon their teenage children staying out late at night. Rightly so, because since there is nothing to do, most teens find reckless things to do instead, like e.g. racing cars, congregating in parking lots, drinking in someone's garage - which always ends up in someone driving drunk. If you let the youth drink at an early age and go to bars or dance clubs, you let them assert their independence in a controlled environment without being reckless. Additionally, this teaches the youth responsibility with alcohol at an accelerated rate while letting them be social and congregate with others their age. 2. There is a caveat to drinking at an earlier age. In Europe you cannot drive until you are 18. This makes sense of course, because if you are experimenting with alcohol you shouldn't be driving. However, by the time you can drive, one already knows how to be responsible with alcohol. By contrast, our system lets you become a good driver first, and then lets you fuck it up when you are allowed to drink at 21. And even still, I would wager that most youth in America drink before 21 anyways and risk doing it secretly while driving around. 3. The ability to transport yourself makes you independent. In Europe, since you cannot drive until 18, they have one thing we do not have - that we would stand to benefit greatly from for other reasons - they have a massive public transit system. This allows young people to transport themselves freely without the need to drive anywhere in a car. I'd say everyone in society would benefit from such infrastructure, since even adults have problems with getting to and from a bar. But the youth stand to benefit much more, because they don't need to rely on Mom or Dad to take them places. They can feel free to test their independence and make their own choices - what to do, where to go, who to meet. In America, you can drive anywhere you want, but there is nowhere to go. And if there is a place to go, it is most likely not a controlled location. The result is delinquency. 4. The age of sexual consent is staggered. At age 14 one can get with a 14 year old and a 15 year old. At 16 one can get with a 15, 16, or 17 year old. At 16 the range goes from 15 to 18, and at 18 one is good to go. I think many Americans might fear such a thing, thinking the youth would have wild orgies and teenage sex would be widespread. In fact, this isn't the case. In Europe, more sexual freedom allows the youth to understand themselves and their sexuality at an age when they should be able to get to know themselves better. Our society still represses sexuality and refuses to let the youth engage in sexual conduct unless it is out of the public's vision. Think about the shame the youth feel when they do something they are biologically capable and mature to do. Think about what sort of effect this has on teenage pregnancy and the desire to hide one's shame through such acts as abortion. I agree that sex education is the best tool to fight teenage pregnancy. But sex education fails to take into account that teenagers simply aren't allowed to engage in sexual conduct. It is shunned upon. Changing our statutory standard would help free society a bit from its self imposed Freudian prison. The end result of teenage independence is a well rounded individual with no social anxiety and a way to be independent from parents and the patronizing aspects of society while building trust with them through exercising their newfound independence in a responsible manner. In America, if you try to do something that someone your age is doing in Europe, even if you think you are doing it responsibly, you get the smack down. That is a fact. No wonder our youth is killing itself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLdVBf0TCQw CLAUDE WILLAN, WASHINGTON POST, 2005 - Borf wasn't an isolated guy; he was a phenomenon. People from L.A. to Europe have assumed his identity and turned it into a group endeavor, subverting popular cultural images in a practice that my twenty-something contemporaries call "culture jamming." This kind of collective identity (which is a kind of anonymity, if you think about it) is my generation's reaction to having been spoon-fed advertising and having had identities marketed to us. We've been led to believe that to be homogenous and fit into certain characteristics is safe and desirable. Even correct. Crudely put, culture jammers represent the way people my age feel about modern society: that its images don't relate to us; that we won't or can't engage with what we've been told we should be; and that all we can do to make ourselves heard is to twist these images back on themselves. In a sense, I'd got to know Borf before I came to America from Britain three weeks ago. He's the American incarnation of British graffiti artist Banksy, who is notable, among other things, for creating pictures of Winston Churchill with a green mohawk. Banksy has been pulling much the same stunt as Borf, in much the same stencil style, and for longer; and he has maintained his anonymity (although he has an agent and a bank account). Major stores have even released posters of his images, making him rich along the way. It's commonplace now in small British towns to see what could only be described as Banksy knock-offs: graffiti mimicking his style and passed off as originals. Just as Banksy's identity has been co-opted into a collective body, so has Borf's. Both tap into ideas articulated by the American graphic artist Shepard Fairey, whose bold, stylized pictures of the late professional wrestler Andre the Giant, which are plastered up in public spaces, are juxtaposed with slogans like "Obey" or "Giant." Fairey says that in his project (called "Andre the Giant Has a Posse") the medium is the message. What Fairey produces looks like trendy advertising but is in fact a deliberately empty message. He's therefore engaged in the subversive distribution of a meaningless thing; it's anti-marketing, anti-singularity, anti-message. Maybe the reason why apparently empty messages like these resonate with my generation is that we don't have any icons of our own. We don't have an Allen Ginsburg, or a Jack Kerouac. We don't even have a Douglas Coupland -- the writer who articulated the idea that the main characteristic of the '90s generation was that it had no characteristic. We have no Bob Dylan, no Bruce Springsteen. When someone recently asked me why people my age (I'm 21) listen to bands from our parents' generation, I had to explain that, with a few exceptions, we don't have any real musicians any more. Without massive advertising campaigns, a lot of the "music" you can buy today, like Beyonce, wouldn't exist. We're a voiceless generation. We have nothing we can point to and say: "This is us, this is where we stand." We're lost and silent and we don't know what to do about it. We're sold a parody of culture that we buy because, well, what choice do we have? Even the generational angst I'm engaging in now is stolen. This is the cry of the generation before mine, the Lost Generation, Generation X, Coupland's kids. People 10 years older than I am cornered the market in existential meanderings and, self-indulgent though it is, at least it's a flag, something to rally round. What have we got? Beyonce and Harry Potter -- both created and sold to us by people our parents' ages. Not that I've anything against Harry Potter; I enjoyed "The Half-Blood Prince" immensely. But it isn't us. It's not who we are. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/22/AR2005072202231.html SITUATIONISTS WIKIPEDIA - A Situationist is a member of the Situationist International, a small group of international political and artistic agitators with roots in Marxism, Lettrism and the early 20th century European artistic and political avant-gardes. Formed in 1957, the SI was active in Europe through the 1960s and aspired to major social and political transformations. In the 1960s it split into a number of different groups, including the Situationist Bauhaus, the Antinational and the Second Situationist International. The first SI disbanded in 1972. . . Situationist ideas have continued to echo profoundly through many aspects of culture and politics in Europe and the USA. . . The list of cultural practices which claim a debt to the SI is almost limitless, but there are some prominent examples: - Situationist ideas exerted a strong influence on the design language of the early punk rock phenomenon of the 1970s, for example. . . - Situationist practices allegedly continue to influence underground street artists such as gHOSTbOY, Banksy, Borf, and Mudwig, whose artistic interventions and subversive practice can be seen on advertising hoardings, street signs and walls throughout Europe and The United States. SITUATIONIST QUOTATIONS - "Live without dead time" - Vivez sans temps mort - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968 - "I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires" - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968 - "Be realistic - demand the impossible!" - Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible! - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968 - "Beneath the paving stones - the beach!" - Sous les pavés, la plage! - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968 - "Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom." - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968 - "People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth"- Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution Of Everyday Life
2007 56,000 FAMILIES NOT ENJOYING DC RENAISSANCE DC EXAMINER - A record 56,047 families from the District of Columbia were on waiting lists for public housing and Section 8 vouchers in November - the latest month for which statistics were available. That's up 7 percent from the same period in 2005, according to the D.C. Housing Authority. . . On any given day, about 300 families are waiting for a spot in D.C. Village, an emergency housing shelter under fire for overcrowding and infestations, among other problems. The shelter, which took in Tucker and Smith, has fewer than 70 beds under normal conditions. Altogether, the city has about 200 family shelter units - not enough to serve families in need. . . The D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute recently estimated that rising rents alone caused a loss of 7,500 units with rents under $500 a month between 2000 and 2004. From 2003 to 2005, the median price of a Washington home shot up 67 percent, from $290,000 to $485,000. And more than 18,000 condos, many with big price tags, are under construction in the city. AS OF 2004 the city had a waiting list of 43,000 families which means that despite the supposed renaissance, the list has shot up 30% in three years. The city had 50,000 residents of public and assisted housing with 9230 publicly assisted housing units, down from 11,473 in 1992. Where did they go? Swallowed for the cause of a happier upscale city. Even the Housing Authority's own reports imply that aiding gentrification is one of its responsibilities: "DCHA received a $34.9 million grant award for the revitalization of Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg in October 2001. Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg, the Washington Navy Yard and the Southeast Federal Center, combine to form one of the largest urban redevelopment areas in the country, in one of the most outstanding locations. . . Arthur Capper and Carrollsburg Dwellings is a 23-acre 758-unit public housing complex located in Near Southeast. The properties are old and obsolete. The high concentration of low-income units combined with the barracks-style architecture of the developments have deterred any significant investment in the community." 2006 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT VS. PUBLIC BENEFIT COMMON DENOMINATOR - It's time to change the lexicon for D.C. government-speak and replace the term "economic development" with "public benefit" when assessing the publicly funded projects under consideration by the city's elected leaders. The new terminology might help some members of the D.C. City Council strip away the layers of obfuscation as they consider their votes in this election year. Voters understand the term "public benefit," which means the general public gets something in return for the investment of their public dollars. "Economic development" has been vague, at best, to describe what the public has received during the past few decades in return for its willingness to trust the promises made by the private development community to wrangle billions of dollars worth of tax breaks, bond financing and other public beneficence from elected officials. Talk is cheap. Despite the public's investment, the District's high unemployment rate has remained nearly static during the "economic development" boom of the past decade and poverty has deepened. . . Stadium proponents can't seem to figure out how much it will cost to build the Taj Mahal - with the bottom line, minus financing costs, escalating about $200 million during the past year - and they want to build it on land that the city doesn't yet own or control. . . There's an important question of how D.C. residents will benefit tangibly from building a new stadium. The Common Denominator asked Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi's office to answer that question in dollars and cents. The answer? There is no anticipated direct financial benefit in new city revenue, which has all been committed to paying off the stadium construction costs. The new city revenue committed to retiring the financing costs, and attributed directly to the stadium's construction, includes estimated annual revenue of $14 million from a ballpark fee and $14 million from a utility tax, collected over 30 years from the business community. . . A $28 million annual investment by the business community in the public schools, rather than a stadium, would generate real public benefits. The business community as a whole would reap benefits from a well-educated workforce, while a new stadium will benefit relatively few D.C. businesses. http://www.thecommondenominator.com/010906_edit.html DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS PROPOSED, [Compiled by Karen DeWitt of the DC Examiner] Anacostia: 18 projects* worth $1.09 billion Columbia Heights/Adams Morgan: 61 projects valued at $920 million Congress Heights/Douglass/Shipley Terrace: 20 projects valued at $686 million Downtown/Mount Vernon: 132 projects valued at $9.3 billion North of Massachusetts Avenue: 51 projects valued at $5.7 billion Southeast Federal Center: 33 projects valued at $3.5 billion 14th and P/U streets: 49 projects valued at $894 million http://dcexaminer.com/articles/2006/01/30/top_news/98special30noma.txt
From the DC Preservation League St. Elizabeths Hospital - west campus http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=801283
2006 STUDY FINDS 'EXTENSIVE FRAUD' AT ONE OF TOP DC EMPLOYERS [It is worth noting that this is a bigger
scandal than the Washington Teachers Union one or anything that
happened during the Marion Barry administration.] The result was a company whose managers engaged in one questionable maneuver after another, including two transactions with investment banking firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that improperly pushed $107 million of Fannie Mae earnings into future years. The aim, OFHEO said, was always the same: To shape the company's books, not in response to accepted accounting rules but in a way that made it appear that the company had reached earnings targets, thus triggering the maximum possible payout for executives including Raines, Howard and others. The settlement closes regulators' civil probe into Fannie Mae's accounting scandal, the result of the company's misstating earnings by about $10.6 billion from 1998 through 2004. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox and acting OFHEO director James B. Lockhart III said they now will turn their focus to individuals, including Raines and Howard, to determine what role former and current executives played in the accounting fraud and if they should be forced to forfeit millions of dollars in what the regulators called "ill-gotten" compensation. They said the Justice Department is continuing a criminal probe. . . ALTHOUGH FRANKLIN RAINES was one of those Washington figures who could do no wrong in the media's eyes - especially the Washington Post - he has plenty to account for, and not just about Fannie Mae. The capital colony of DC was a major victim of the dubious activities of Raines and his institution. RAINES' NAME has long been associated with a local combine that hoped to take over Washington's new baseball team. Raines was to have a five percent share. HERE'S ANOTHER little known sidelight to Raines: GREG PIERCE, WASHINGTON TIMES, OCT 23 - Donations from 23 executives of mortgage buyer Fannie Mae helped New York Democratic Sen. Charles E. Schumer raise more campaign funds than any of his colleagues in the past quarter, Bloomberg News reports, citing disclosure forms. Mr. Schumer raised $1.7 million in the three months ending Sept. 30 and has $18 million cash on hand for his 2004 re-election campaign, forms filed with the Federal Election Commission show. As a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Mr. Schumer is helping to write legislation that affects Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage buyer, and rival Freddie Mac. A bill designed to strengthen the government-chartered companies' regulation by shifting their oversight from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Treasury Department is stalled in Congress. Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines and Chief Financial Officer J. Timothy Howard, with 21 colleagues, gave a combined $13,750 to Mr. Schumer from July through the past month. Mr. Raines gave $1,000 to Mr. Schumer on July 18, the day after the banking committee held hearings on the company's regulation, FEC records show. WHAT IS ALSO NOT widely known was Raines' role in stripping DC of much of its limited home rule powers during the heavily hyped financial crisis of the 90s, which in fact was about the same in real dollars as what the city faced when it first got home rule in 1974. Clinton administration official Raines was at the heart of such schemes as cutting off the city's control over its own prisoners and ripping off its pension fund balance to make the federal budget look a few billion dollars better. PROGRESSIVE REVIEW DC NEWS SERVICE, 1997 - President Clinton is proposing a financing scheme for DC that would replace a formula based on the equities of the city's relations with the federal government with one based on major and permanent dependency. The Clinton plan would remove the possibility that the city could gain true self-government again and certainly not statehood. It proposes that DC ever more be a financial ward of the national government. Demonstrating that no humiliation is too great to bear provided they are not stripped of their salaries and token status, many elected DC officials are lining up behind the scheme. Two of these plans -- the tax haven scheme and the latest White House proposal -- bear the imprint of Franklin Raines, now the president's budget director but formerly head of Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae is the city's biggest deadbeat thanks to an enormous congressional tax exemption. Raines is close to [DC Delegate] Eleanor Holmes Norton who is already cheering the federal takeover plan. Under the current system, the federal government makes an annual payment that theoretically reflects the cost of services provided by the city and revenues lost due to the federal presence. In 1993 the city estimated this cost to be nearly $2 billion dollars a year. The actual federal payment is one-third that amount and a smaller percentage of the city's revenues that at the beginning of home rule. PROGRESSIVE REVIEW DC NEWS SERVICE, 1998 - Clinton and [Alice] Rivlin's successor, Franklin Raines, ripped off funds contributed to the DC pension fund in order to create the impression that the federal government had taken over responsibility for this fund. In fact, the feds will spend nothing until they have drained existing contributions down to zero. After that the city is at the mercy of a Congress and a White House that once also promised that Social Security would never be touched and that home rule was forever. . .Not surprisingly, the Clinton plan is being pushed by the erstwhile vice chair of the city's biggest tax deadbeat: Fannie Mae, whose congressional exemption from local taxation costs the city several hundred million a year. Clinton's budget director Franklin Raines, while running Fannie Mae, perfected a scheme for stifling protests against his firm by spreading charitable donations around the city with special attention to those organizations that might make formidable opponents of FM's tax exemption. Raines was also the unofficial budget advisor to the fiscally disastrous [Mayor] Sharon Pratt Kelly, whose one term was harder on the city's finances than all the Barry administrations combined.
STATEHOODERS URGE FENTY TO DITCH FEDERAL CITY COUNCIL DC STATEHOOD GREEN PARTY - "We know that the Federal City Council, real estate and big landlord lobbies, and other wealthy interests are pressing Mr. Fenty to enact their agenda," said Statehood Green Party activist John Ely. "We remind Mr. Fenty that he was elected because of his dedication to the needs of the people of the District of Columbia, especially their housing, education, and health care." The Federal City Council is a secretive, elite roundtable of local business leaders. It has consistently promoted policies leading to gentrification, displacement of D.C.'s chiefly African American middle- and low-income working population, and privatization of services and resources. Among the Federal City Council's recent accomplishments have been the closing of D.C. General Hospital, the District's only full-service health care institution, and the enactment of school vouchers and a charter school system; these goals were sought in cooperation with Congress, which holds veto power over District legislation, policies, and budgets. On September 13, the day after the Democratic primary, Mr. Fenty met with Federal City Council chair Terry Golden. Statehood Greens listed several issues in which the agenda of Federal City Council and other corporate lobbies are in conflict with the interests of D.C. residents: - Adrian Fenty has named a Federal City Council employee, Victor Reinoso, as Deputy Mayor for Education. Mr. Reinoso advocates a takeover of the D.C. Board of Education, transforming it into an appointed advisory body. Mr. Fenty, after he won the Democratic primary in September, said that he would consider a takeover. Mr. Fenty also chose Neil Albert as his new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development. Mr. Albert was C.E.O. for Ed Build, a private education services and construction firm created by the Federal City Council and the New Schools Venture Fund, an investment group tied to the national charter school movement. "Bureaucratization of the School Board would be a serious blow to the democratic rights and needs of D.C. residents -- especially our children," said Gail Dixon, Statehood Green and former elected at-large member of the School Board who lost her seat because of Mayor Williams' partial privatization. "It would be an attempt to use the Board to enact Federal City Council policy, especially the expansion of D.C.'s failing charter school program. We opposed Mayor Williams partial bureaucratization a few years ago, and we now oppose the takeover bid just as strongly. We need our public schools to be modernized and provided with up-to-date equipment and textbooks, not privatization schemes and a toothless, unelected School Board." - Adrian Fenty has acquiesced to current
Mayor Anthony Williams' proposal to close the Martin Luther King,
Jr. Library in downtown D.C. and build a new central library
on the site of the old Convention Center. LOOKS LIKE THE REAL WINNER WAS THE FEDERAL CITY COUNCIL SAVE OUR SCHOOLS COALITION - DC voters supported Adrian Fenty because we thought that he would stand up for longtime residents, rebuild our traditional public schools, and stem the tide of gentrification and displacement. A vote for Adrian Fenty was a vote against rampant development and corporate takeover. But on September 13, the day after the Democratic primary, Adrian Fenty met with Terry Golden of the Federal City Council, a secretive group of rich business people known for working behind the scenes to pursue an agenda of gentrification, privatization, and displacement, including the closing of DC General Hospital. Over the past ten years, the FCC has worked with local officials, the US Congress, and corporate privatizers to market school "choice"-charter schools and vouchers -- as the answer to a neglected public school system. Charter schools and vouchers, however, have failed to deliver on their promise to reform public education for the better. Recognizing this, parents, students, teachers, and community activists have successfully demanded the resources to rebuild our decaying school buildings, and a long-term plan to deliver a good education to all our children is on the table. Now the Mayor-elect is talking about "taking over" the public school system. We didn't hear about this before his primary victory. It all started after that meeting with Terry Golden. Since then, Fenty has appointed a Federal City Council Employee, Victor Reinoso, his Deputy Mayor for Education. He wants to reduce the Board of Education to an "advisory" body. And Neil Albert, Fenty's new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, was C.E.O. for Ed Build, a private education services and construction firm created by the Federal City Council and the New Schools Venture Fund, an investment group with ties to the national charter school movement. http://www.saveourschoolsdc.org
2006. . . DC RIDDING ITSELF OF PUBLIC SPACE: MULTI-USE CEMETERIES NEXT? SOMETIMES even a good cynic like your editor misses the story. At first, I thought the trashing of public housing was just about housing, the closing of DC General just about health, and so forth. But a phrase woke me up: multi-use. It first appeared in talking about what to do with public schools that weren't up to capacity, but then it was used to describe the new look in libraries. Plans are afoot to multiuse Benning, RC Christian, Watha Daniel, not to mention the main library. Making a library a multi-use building is like turning your home into a multi-unit residence. When's all said and done, you have less of a home. Here's what is really going on. Land is becoming so valuable in DC that the city government is finding anyway it can to get rid of public buildings by closing them and selling them off - as with public housing and schools - or forcing the current occupants to share their space with developers of one sort or another. Since the targeted public buildings serve people at the lower end of DC's income scale they lack the clout to do much about it. Except to move to Ward Nine, which is what our politicians would like them to do anyway. To be sure, there can be good design arguments to be made for multi-use buildings, but they fall flat if the designing isn't being done in the interest of those whose buildings are about to be multi-used. The new libraries, for example, are being designed for development not reading. They are being designed to aid politician's campaign contributors, not their constituents. One gets the sense that Williams and the Council would propose multi-use cemeteries if they could get away with it. After all, DC land is far too valuable to just be used for public purposes. And the dead pay no taxes. MULTI-ABUSING LIBRARIES OUTSOURCING DC'S GOVERNMENT THE WASHINGTON TIMES reports that over half the city government's employees live in the suburbs. This is true and sad but not new and it brings to mind one of the best things Barry did when he was a council member: get a law passed that gave DC residents preference for DC government jobs. By 1987, 60% of the city's employees lived in DC. But that year Congress stripped the city of its residency preferences and by 1995, 70% of DC workers lived in the suburbs. According to Edward Meyers in "Public Opinion and the Future of the Nation's Capital," this meant a $420 million annual reduction in the city's overall economy. Says Meyers, "Congress transformed the District with this one policy revision more than it did with all its other post-1975 actions combined." The situation has gotten far worse, with the economy loss now topping $1 billion a year. And writes the Times: "Ed Lazere, director of the nonprofit D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, said a 'very crude' estimate shows that the District loses $50 million to $100 million in potential revenue from city government jobs held by nonresidents." There are also huge non-monetary costs. While certainly not true universally, there is little doubt that more than a few teachers and police officers regard the city where they work as more like a colony than their hometown. And it shows in the results. http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20060718-104111-7983r.htm FEBRUARY 2006 School modernization: $150 million Baseball stadium: $535 million Mental hospital: $200 million National Capital Medical Center: $200 million Convention Center expansion and hotel: $650 million [Which means by 2009, each of us could owe another $2,253 each] THE CITY SURPLUS THE CITY has ended the year with a $370 million surplus, a tribute to the socio-economic cleansing of DC. According to the Center for Budget Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, the income of a typical citizen in the city's lower economic quintile has grown exactly $382 in real dollars since the 1980s while someone in the top quintile now earns $70,382 more. So no one should be surprised by the surplus, although some might want to say a prayer for those on whose backs it was accomplished through such things as outsourcing our prisons; eliminating affordable housing; letting schools, libraries and recreation center deteriorate; and doing away with our public hospital. Further, although there is a lot of talk
about what a wonderful money manager Anthony Williams is, history
tells a somewhat different story. For example, Marion Barry entered
office in 1979 with a deficit equivalent in constant dollars
to what the federal control board encountered in the late 1990s.
Barry produced a steady stream of budget surpluses until 1987
after which he had two out of three deficit years. In 1991 there
was a budget surplus roughly the same as this years. And the
less wealthy were not shortchanged as they are today. Finally,
contrary to local myth, the budget deficit that led to the federal
takeover was largely the doing of Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly.
THE DC GENERAL HOSPITAL DISASTER CONTINUES City Desk 10/25/07 [The media is second only to certain late Argentinean dictatorships in disappearing things it doesn't care about, albeit more discreetly. Thus, in the coverage of the Southeast Hospital story, you'll find barely a mention of its powerful roots in the disastrous closing of DC General Hospital by the Williams administration with the support of the city council. A rare exception is the sainted DC Watch.] GARY IMHOFF, DC WATCH - Years later, the city is still paying for the costly mistake of closing our only public hospital, DC General, in southeast. After spending tens of millions of dollars propping up the former owners of Greater Southeast Community Hospital -- has anyone ever calculated the total amount of subsidies -- the government is now spending $79 million to underwrite the purchase of Greater Southeast by a new buyer, Specialty Hospitals of America. This week, Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi warned that the $79 million may be just the down payment that DC taxpayers will be required to pay. Gandhi wrote that he had three concerns: first, that the company buying the hospital, Specialty Hospitals of America, is not financially stable. Its unaudited financial statements show that it is $34 million in debt, which it offsets by claiming an asset of $34 million in good will. He also writes, second, that SHA's five-year business plan for the hospital lacks detail, and does not provide a convincing case that it will be financially successful. Third, he warns that the District's lien on the hospital site, which it is counting on to secure its investment, will have to be at least partially released in order to allow future development on the site. http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2007/07-10-24.htm WASH POST - The D.C. Council unanimously approved a final agreement yesterday to spend $79 million to help a for-profit company purchase the troubled Greater Southeast Community Hospital, despite a warning from the city's chief financial officer that the buyer is financially unstable. Natwar M. Gandhi released his disapproving four-page report yesterday morning, contending that New England-based Specialty Hospitals of America "is not in strong financial condition" and that its five-year operating plan does not show that the hospital will be viable under the company's ownership. "Should the business plan fail, it is likely that additional funds of substantial amounts will be needed to keep the hospital running," Gandhi wrote in his financial impact statement. Although at least half of the council members expressed concern over Gandhi's warning, the prospect of Greater Southeast's imminent demise if the sale collapses prodded the unanimous vote. Greater Southeast is the city's only hospital east of the Anacostia River, an area where residents suffer from high rates of cancer and diabetes and other chronic diseases. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/23/AR2007102300793_pf.html ROBYN MELTON, DISTRICT CHRONICLES, 2001 - They have protested, they have held town meetings, and now advocates of keeping D.C. General Hospital open are taking their case to Congress. . . [Loretta] Owens and several community activists and leaders held an emergency town meeting at the Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast last Tuesday to vent their anger at city officials for deciding to refer D.C. General patients to Greater Southeast Hospital, once the hospital officially closes. According to the members at the town meeting, residents who would normally go to D.C. General would be able to get diagnosis and prescriptions by Greater Southeast. More beds will be added and a new system will be enforced; however, the bid made no commitment to build a new hospital. In efforts to accommodate Southeast residents for the loss of D.C. General, Greater Southeast Hospital was selected in an unanimous vote on Friday and Saturday by panels of officials representing the financial control board, Mayor Anthony Williams, the city's chief financial officer; Natwar Gandhi and the city council. . . During the meeting, Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, director of Abundant Life Clinic in Washington, D.C., said he believed that Greater Southeast was a ridiculous choice. "D.C. General should be taking over Greater Southeast," Muhammad said. "Southeast already has 228 acute beds, where are they going to put 187 more people? In the basements, broom closets, parking lots or cafeterias?" Continued... Muhammad likened the city's decision to a game of musical chairs. "Instead, though, it's musical hospital beds," he said. "And when the music stops if someone doesn't have a bed, they're going to die." [Said Owens], "If you shut D.C. General down, it's too far for residents in that Ward to travel," she said. "If they have a gunshot wound or serious injury, they're going to die trying to get there." DC STATEHOOD GREEN PARTY - While D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams proceeds with the privatization of D.C. General Hospital and dismantling of its services, the D.C. Statehood Green Party continues to demand, along with the Health Care Now Coalition, Service Employees International Union, and numerous other local organizations, coalitions, unions, third parties, and churches that D.C. General be maintained as a full service public hospital. Along with thousands of other D.C. residents, Statehood Greens have grown impatient and angry at Mayor Anthony Williams' duplicity and obfuscation in pushing the privatization plan, which was ordered by the DC Financial Control Board, an unelected body imposed by Congress and the White House. Many D.C. residents are especially angry at the Mayor's vague, evasive, and dismissive responses to their concerns. Privatization will end inpatient care at D.C. General, and farm the hospital's clientele -- mostly poor and low-income working people, for whom the emergency room serves as a doctor's office -- out to clinics and private hospitals throughout D.C., many of which are ill-prepared to receive them. Neither the Mayor nor D.C. Health Department Director Dr. Ivan Walks has offered a specific plan to ensure that primary care services will be in place. DC WATCH - The DCHC proposal, which Mayor
Williams has refused to make public, contains only vague promises
of how DC residents, especially the neediest who have depended
on DC General, will be served. DC WATCH - DC Council Member David Catania has compiled documentation proving DCHC, a for-profit company, is deeply in debt and unprofitable; and DCHC has a reputation for inability to complete deals and for 11th hour demands in negotiations. Furthermore, it's illegal for the DC to do business with a corporation that owes back taxes to the city; DCHC has owed the city back taxes since it bought Greater Southwest Community Hospital. http://www.dcwatch.com/issues/pbc010220.htm KATHRYN SINZINGER, COMMON DENOMINATOR, 2002 - A long-secret report prepared for the District's now-dormant financial control board reveals that board members knew Greater Southeast Community Hospital's finances were shaky when they overruled a unanimous D.C. City Council and signed a five-year multimillion-dollar contract with the hospital to administer health-care services for the city's indigent population. . . Greater Southeast - which, along with its parent company, sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection last November - was recently replaced by the D.C. Department of Health as the contract's administrator but remains part of the network. . . A copy of the full Price Waterhouse Coopers report, while provided by the control board to the mayor's office, has never been given to the council or to the public. http://www.thecommondenominator.com/061603_news1.html DANIEL P. MCLEAN, CEO, GWU HOSPITAL, 2003 - Make no mistake: The health care plan for the District's uninsured residents put in place by D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams with approval from the now-defunct control board is an abject failure. Two-and-a-half years ago, the mayor decided to close D.C. General Hospital and its clinics and replace them with a privatized system of care. While elements of this decision -- such as linking enrolled residents to primary care physicians for a "medical home" -- made sense, the plan failed to account for the needs of those the new system was intended to serve or of the health care providers who served them. Numerous mistakes followed the initial faulty decision. One of the largest was the company chosen to run the D.C. Healthcare Alliance, as the privatized health care safety net was named: Doctors Community Healthcare. This out-of-town firm had no track record in running similar programs, and its financial stability was questionable. It had recently purchased the bankrupt Greater Southeast Community Hospital and was promising to provide most of the needed care there. But its financial problems aside, Greater Southeast did not offer the range of specialized health care services that had been available at D.C. General, meaning that patients displaced by the closure of that public hospital had to turn to the other private hospitals in the District to receive care -- hospitals that had been providing two-thirds of the uncompensated care in the city even when D.C. General was fully operational. Don't worry, the mayor told the hospitals. The District would make sure that they would not be harmed by the end of D.C. General. They would be paid for their services, he said. Moreover, Greater Southeast would pick up the ball, developing more services, including Level I trauma services, to serve the people covered by the alliance. The mayor said an emergency facility would be kept on the old D.C. General campus to help reduce the need for patients to travel to Greater Southeast. GARY IMHOFF, DC WATCH - Closing DC General Hospital allowed the mayor to capture a vast tract of valuable public land to divvy up among his favored developers and to redirect public health care dollars to his two largest campaign contributors. But it was a devastating blow to public health care in the District. http://dcwatch.com MARGARET BARRON, DIRECTOR OF THE PROVIDENCE HOSPITAL EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT - D.C. hospitals do not have a 75 percent occupancy rate.... [F]rom October to March each year, the occupancy rate of available general medical-surgical beds is 100 percent on many days of the week. The same is true for intensive care unit beds in many of our hospitals. . . Greater Southeast Hospital cannot possibly develop, staff and become an accredited trauma center in three months. . . . WASH POST, 2001 - Although the Mayor's office complained that the Mayor was 'ambushed' by Rev. Willie Wilson's criticism of the Mayor's plans at a public meeting at Union Temple on March 1, the Mayor's Chief of Staff Abdusalam Omer was told in advance that Rev. Wilson opposed closing D.C. General and he would speak against it in the meeting at his church. In a meeting shortly between the Mayor and local ministers shortly after the Union Temple event, "the ministers said the mayor had insulted them by having uniformed officers remain until the pastors insisted they leave. 'To have to be surrounded by armed policemen -- it shows the insensitivity,' said the Rev. Willie F. Wilson, of Union Temple Baptist Church. 'It was despicable.'" PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2001 - Ron Linton, former chair of the Public Benefits Corporation: "Yes, the hospital has run a deficit. Yes, it could have been managed better. It should have been replaced years ago with a modern facility. But that has little to do with the current situation. DC General receives from the city about $40 million a year. It needs $75 to meet its budget. But instead of giving DC General $35 million more, the city apparently at the Control Board's direction, will give Southeast (a profit making institution) $85 million to do less than what is done now at DC General." PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2000 - [Privatization of D.C. General] makes about as much sense as letting the marketplace decide whether there we have a fire or police department MERCK OUTSOURCED SOME OF VACCINE TRIALS TO INDIAN FIRM ALTERNET - "The safety of new agents cannot be known with certainty until a drug has been on the market for years," according to a 2002 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Serious [adverse drug reactions] commonly emerge after Food and Drug Administration approval." Reacting to outrage over Vioxx and other drug safety debacles, the FDA announced on Jan. 30 that it will eventually require comprehensive safety reviews of new drugs 18 months after their introduction. For now, assurances of efficacy and safety are only as good as the data on which they are based. While more than 20,000 women between ages 16 and 26 took part in trials, the sample of 9 to 15-year-old girls was small -- only 1,184. And since no participants have been followed for more than five years, long-term effects remain unknown. "The published data looks great, but at the very least, I would like to see efficacy data among 11- and 12-year-olds, which won't emerge until they are sexually active," says Karen Smith-McCune, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco. It also takes time to assess whether data are comprehensive and reliable, and mirror real-world conditions. Merck outsourced some of its Gardasil trials to Contract Research Organizations in the developing world, including Jaya Jan Pharmaceutical Research in India. CROs are part of a $14 billion industry that recruits subjects and runs trials for Big Pharma. Conflicts of interest can arise when CROs are paid royalties only after a drug is approved rather than getting a set fee independent of results, or when CROs believe favorable findings will lead to future contracts. Merck spokesperson Amy Rose refused to specify how, or even if, the company oversees CROs. http://www.alternet.org/stories/49149/ MAKER OF PROPOSED REQUIRED DC VACCINE HIT WITH $20 MILLION DAMAGES OVER ANOTHER DRUG BBC - A US jury has awarded damages of $20m against drugs giant Merck in a case arising from its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx. The judgement means the jury may now move on to assess punitive damages against Merck. Vioxx was pulled from the market in September 2004 after a study found it could double the risk of heart attacks. The New Jersey jury ruled that Vioxx had contributed to a 61-year old man's heart attack. The jury awarded $18m to Frederick Humeston, who suffered the heart attack after taking Vioxx for knee pain, and a further $2m to his wife. This was the second case brought by Mr Humeston after an earlier suit failed. . . The jury in the second case found that Merck had failed to provide adequate warnings about the health risks associated with Vioxx. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/business/6443259.stm QUESTIONS ABOUT THE HPV VACCINE TO ANSWER BEFORE IT BECOMES MANDATORY [From testimony before the Dc City Council] ASANTEWAA NKRUMAH-TURE - I am not personally advocating against the HPV vaccine; I'm strongly advocating that we all ask questions and demand all of our questions and concerns be addressed to our satisfaction. . . The following questions must be asked: - Does the vaccine Gardasil prevent all types of cervical cancer? If not, which ones will it prevent? Does the vaccine protect against the most common types of cervical cancer here in the USA? If the leading killer of women in the USA is heart disease and not breast or cervical cancer, why is this vaccine being made "mandatory"? - New Jersey-based Merck Co. makes this vaccine and its questionable ties to politicians and others has now come to light. For example, Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry received $6,000 from the drug company's political action committee during his re-election campaign. . . Billions of dollars can be made by the drug company; the three required doses cost $360, and of course, the drug company is aggressively pushing for the vaccine to be "mandatory." - Who is held liable in the case of mild or severe adverse effects or allergic reactions? . . . How many years of study on possible adverse effects has been done and documented? - How do you "opt out" and who is responsible for explaining this process? Is it a time consuming process? Are there any penalties for opting out? - If a young girl's parent [or] guardian is in jail, prison or a mental institution, do such parents [or] guardians give up their right to give consent for this vaccine? Who will advise such parents [or] guardians of their legal rights? - Has Merck and Co. had any type of contact with any members of our City Council, their staff members, our city's Department of Health, their staff members or any other city officials? Has this drug company had any contact with any of our city's community leaders or other health care professionals? - Cervical cancer and HIV - AIDS are both caused by a virus. Why are some people trying to make the HPV vaccine "mandatory" and not mandatory testing for HIV - AIDS, especially in a city like Washington, DC with its ever increasing HIV - AIDS rate, especially among women? Since DC General Hospital is now closed, where do you go to get the vaccine? Community clinics? Planned Parenthood? Your private doctor's office? - The obvious race, class and gender aspects of this issue cannot be overlooked. Why didn't the HPV vaccine proponents do the kind of research of community opinion and carefully plan educational programs to answer any and all questions and concerns parents and the general public may have? . . . - Why not make high quality public schools, equipment, supplies and infrastructure "mandatory"; comprehensive, science-based human sexuality education; affordable health care; health insurance; living-wage jobs; domestic violence, sexual assault and violence prevention education; high school and post-high school vocational education; substance abuse prevention education, etc. Why must African people, women, people of color and other marginalized groups of people, our bodies, be made guinea pigs for the benefit and advancement of science? WHY YOU DON'T WANT TO RUSH TO MAKE A VACCINE MANDATORY REUTERS -
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it was notifying health-care
providers and consumers about reports of some 28 cases of infants
suffering a serious bowel condition after receiving Merck &
Co's new vaccine against the Rotavirus. The FDA said it was not
immediately clear how many of the 28 reported cases were caused
by the vaccine. It said the condition, known as intussusception,
can occur in the absence of vaccination. Some 3.5 million doses
of Merck's Rota Teq have been distributed in the United States
since its approval last February, the FDA said.
FEBRUARY 2006 GOOD AND BAD NEWS ABOUT HOMELESSNESS NATIONAL COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS - According to Ann Marie Staudenmaier, an attorney at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, surveys conducted by the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty over the past few months show that various police agencies are unfriendly toward homeless people and frequently target them for harassment. These surveys show "that both the Metro Police Department and U.S. Park Police. . . frequently approach homeless persons who are not violating the law in any way and either demand to see their ID, search their bags, or move them out of the area. " Staudenmaier also notes that camp "sweeps " are prevalent, and that police may be violating city's memorandum of understanding the Washington Legal Clinic helped draft, by not providing sufficient notice and not storing people's belongings when clearing out public spaces. Faced with an increasing number of people forced to live on the streets, the downtown business community in Washington, D.C., decided to create a day center for homeless people who may not have anywhere to go during the day when shelters are closed. Through the Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District, business owners started and continue to fund a day center that can serve up to 260 people per day, with indoor seating, laundry, showers, and a morning meal. The center also has partnerships with local service providers who come on site once or twice a week to provide medical, psychiatric, legal, and employment services, as well as housing counseling, substance abuse treatment, and case management. Business owners in D.C. finance the day shelter through a 1-cent tax for each square foot of property owned by a business. http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/allcities.html FEBRUARY 2006 AFFORDABLE HOUSING: ALL TALK, NO WALK KAREN DEWITT of the Examiner has an article on affordable housing, which is one of those phrases like Santa Claus - every one talks about it, you just can't find it. One reason that you can't find it is that we have been busy doing away with it - such as public housing and Section 8. To see what this looks like, just drive the Southeast Freeway around the 6th Street exit. What you see to the south used to be public housing. Lots of it. Another reason we can't find it is because the city is afraid to build it, loan money for it, or in other ways compete with the private housing market. Around the world, the places with the most abundant decent, affordable housing are those not afraid to be called socialist. In DC we provide for the welfare fathers - aka developers - and evict the welfare mothers. The city could, for example, go into partnership with homebuyers, lowering the latter's cost by shared equity. In a town with rising values, such a program would pay for itself since the city would get its share of the property when sold. The city could loosen zoning rules to encourage accessory apartments, letting people construct units that would help them pay their mortgage and help others find a flat they can afford. LA, for example, has some 40,000 illegal apartments because people really find them useful. The city could use its own land - such as surplus school buildings - for city owned affordable housing instead of selling it to a developer. The city could emphasize low rise retail development with apartments on the upper floors, the sort of development you rarely see any more but which helped to house an earlier generation of Americans. But as long as the planning of the city is driven by the goal of making the biggest developers and businesses the most money, all the rest of its citizens are going to come out the short end - in housing and everything else.
2007 BENNING LIBRARY DEMOLITION TARGET OF SUIT A REQUEST FOR A temporary restraining order and injunction were filed in DC Superior Court to stop the demolition of Benning Library. The motions were filed by C-SOL, Community to Support Our Libraries, a citizen organization that supports the reopening of the Benning branch library. Closed in December, 2004, along with three other branches ­ Anacostia, Watha T. Daniels, and Tenley ­ under the guise of renovation, the Benning Library housed an award-winning chess program, a meeting space for dozens of civic organizations, a voting poll, safe spaces for seniors and youth, internet access for school children and others in a community that substantially lacks computers and corresponding access to the internet. There was at the time of filing no sight of a bookmobile, and the interim library opening scheduled for June 20th had been further delayed due to "connectivity problems." "This is unfortunately all too typical in our community's experience dealing with the library commission in this matter," said Dorothy Douglas, Chair of ANC Commission 7D. "This [library] commission has already squandered over $3 million dollars without any benefit to our community, and now they can't get their interim box [library] opened." In the Benning Road community, most of the public schools lack libraries. "First, they wouldn't listen to us
when we said their renovation plans would give us a smaller library
- when we needed and wanted more space. Then they tried to force
a 'mixed-use' proposal down our throats; now they want us to
believe they can be trusted to tear down a building designed
to have more stories added to it for more space and give us our
library back. . . and in a timely fashion. The time for outsiders
coming into our community and telling us what is good for us
is over" said Rick Tingling-Clemmons, ANC Commissioner. SOME REASONS NOT TO CLOSE THE ML KING LIBRARY [From Empower DC] - Closing MLK with no immediate replacement would leave residents without the central library for an open-ended length of time - The proposal to lease MLK for 99 years at $1.50 per square foot clearly demonstrates that this action is not being taken to derive the greatest benefit to the taxpayers - as market rate leases in the area of the library command as much as $300 per square foot - Emergency legislation should be reserved for true emergencies - not for ensuring that an unpopular piece of legislation is passed before the exit of end-of-term Council people and Mayor - There are 4 closed community libraries which have not been renovated and reopened as promised It is highly suspicious that, despite ongoing public outcry against the plan to close MLK and the CFO's own report that renovating MLK would be less costly than building a new central library, members of the Council are still pushing to pass the Library Transformation Act. Even more dubious is the fact that some Council people are pushing for an emergency vote which conveniently circumvents public testimony. DC WATCH - To strengthen their case that MLK Library is too far gone to be renovated, the District government and the library administrators have continued in their policy of demolition by neglect. The building has broken elevators, leaking pipes, security breaches, and overheated reading rooms (the Black Studies Reading Room had to be closed last week when the heat reached 98 degrees). Now head librarian Ginnie Cooper seems determined to discourage use of the library further by reducing services. On December 8, she closed the periodical reading room, without any prior notice to the rank-and-file staff at MLK or to the librarians who head the other reading rooms at MLK, and she reassigned the periodical librarians to other duties. The excuse for getting rid of the periodical reading room is that the space is needed for a computer laboratory, even though MLK already has plenty of empty space in the basement and on the fourth floor, and even though every reading room is already jammed with computers. . . The question remains: why should we trust the administration, the library Board of Trustees, or the top officials of the library system to treat a new central library any better than they treat MLK, or to treat the public any better in a new library than they treat us now at MLK? http://dcwatch.com 2006 YOU CAN'T TELL A BOOK PLACE BY ITS COVER SAM SMITH - It may be that the best thing to do about the main DC Library is nothing - at least for a while. Neither side in this controversy seems to have a solution worth cheering about, although clearly the approach of the mayor and some members of the city council is the worst: stuffing it into one of the new multi-storied ice cubes planned for the old convention center site. There to sit like slices of bologna squeezed between a hunk of retail below and a hunk of condos above - looking like every other building that's been put up downtown over the past decade or so - but certainly not like a library. Since when are only people who charge us big bucks for things allowed to build downtown? How far throughout the city will the government's antipathy towards public spaces be extended? After all, you could get a lot of money for condos in Rock Creek Park. The current MLK Library at least has its own identity and even though you might confuse it for the lobbying headquarters of the pharmaceutical industry, you know it is meant to be something. Still, I can't recall many kind words about the place until Williams decided to get rid of it. Library workers have constantly complained as have citizens forced to go to meetings in its gloomy basement public spaces where if you turn the wrong knob you may end up with the trash instead of listening to the speakers you came to hear. MLK in a close contest with UDC for the worst designed official city architecture. Benjamin Forgey thinks it's great but then Benjamin Forgey belongs to the trade that excuses Frank Lloyd Wright for designing a house so poorly that it would cost several million dollars some decades later just to shore it up. Sculpture doesn't have to be useful; architecture does. But don't tell architects and their critics that; it annoys them. Further, architecture is the only form of art with tenure. Paintings you're tired of can be stuffed in the closet, CDs you can throw away, and books you can sell to someone else, but buildings - by bulk and mythology - have a remarkable permanence even if, like the MLK Library, they never did the job they were designed for. There are lots of wonderful buildings in DC that have been worth saving - from the Hecht's warehouse to the Old Post Office to the Willard to the Sears catalog houses. But just like other mortals, architects actually do make mistakes and the MLK Library was one of them. Which doesn't mean you have to tear it down. One solution, for example, would be to let the pharmaceutical industry use it for its lobbying headquarters. Another, already on the table, is a renovation designed by Kent Cooper, a fine local architect. The Cooper plan would improve the looks of the place but how much better would it be as a library? People go to libraries to read and check out books and use the Internet. How does making a glass-topped cathedral out of the place help that? One thing that has been missing from both sides are the voices of skilled librarians. One reason is that they don't want to get fired. Another is that maybe nobody asked them. This wouldn't be a bad time to take a deep breath and do the job right. Downgrade the architects, the planners and the politicians and upgrade the librarians and users. And getting a new mayor might not hurt, either. GRAPHICS CONTROVERSIAL NEW LIBRARY DIRECTOR GET $1 MILLION DEAL COMMON DENOMINATOR - D.C. officials have agreed to pay more than $1 million over the next five years to Ginnie Cooper to become executive director of the D.C. Public Library. Cooper, who was awarded the job Thursday in a unanimous vote during a special meeting of the D.C. Board of Library Trustees, has resigned her current position at the helm of the nation's fifth largest library system in Brooklyn, N.Y., to take over the District's much-smaller system this summer. Brooklyn's 60-library system serves a population of 3 million, while the District's 27-library system serves about 570,000 residents. Cooper was reportedly paid $200,000 per year under a five-year contract with the Brooklyn Public Library, which she is leaving 18 months before her contract expires. She recently came under fire for taking an unauthorized vacation, for which she gave back more than $20,000 in pay, and for closing a library when a librarian received a minor injury, according to published reports in New York. Cooper's contract as D.C. library director
will pay her a basic rate of $179,946 per year, plus a "retention
incentive" of $25,054. D.C. personnel regulations define
a retention incentive as "an authorized amount or rate of
additional compensation paid to an employee who occupies a position
determined by the personnel authority to have a significant recruitment
and retention problem," according to D.C. Public Library
spokeswoman Monica Lewis. . . KATE TAYLOR, NY SUN - After a series of attacks in the press, the executive director of the Brooklyn Public Library, Ginnie Cooper, stepped down yesterday, 18 months before the end of her five-year term. During her tenure, Ms. Cooper started an early literacy program at the library and conceived a plan to construct a specialized library for the visual and performing arts in downtown Brooklyn, but she also faced much public turmoil. The library said she left to become the executive director of the District of Columbia's public library system. In late March, after a librarian lost the tip of her pinkie while trying to break up a fight among several girls, Ms. Cooper decided to temporarily close the popular Brownsville library branch. Mayor Bloomberg called the move an overreaction, and Brownsville residents angrily criticized the decision at a town meeting. Earlier that month, Ms. Cooper clashed with the library's board of trustees when they decided not to allow her to go on a $20,000 publicly funded trip to Hong Kong and Singapore for a library conference. Late last year, the Daily News reported that Ms. Cooper took six extra weeks of vacation. She was forced to return $27,000 in pay. A spokeswoman for the library said Ms. Cooper was not available for comment yesterday. http://www.nysun.com/article/32980 NY DAILY NEWS - "I'm sure there won't be a whole lot of tears in Brownsville over her departure," said Councilman Charles Barron (D-East New York). http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/417278p-352524c.html
FEBRUARY 2006 GO FOR THE GOLD ROSES TO MIKE PANETTA for reviving an idea your editor unsuccessfully pushed 11 years ago: a DC Olympic Committee. Writes Panetta: |||| Like many good ideas, this one started over a few beers at the Adams Mill Bar. I was watching the 2004 Olympic opening ceremonies and said to myself, 'That looks cool, I wish I could march in the opening ceremonies.'' Being way past my prime athletically to make any U.S. team, I began to think about what developing countries would be open to me sliding them a few bucks to make me a winter athlete - after all whose job would I be taking? Then something weird happened. The U.S. Men's Basketball Team lost to the Puerto Rican Olympic team in a stunning upset. Like many Americans, my biggest questions were: 'Why the hell does Puerto Rico have a team? Aren't they part of the United States?' I did a little looking around and found out that not only does Puerto Rico have a team, but so does Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands - all part of the United States. The wheels started turning in my head. I knew that Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, while parts of the United States, each only have one, non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives. The District of Columbia also only has one, non-voting delegate in the U.S. House. However, unlike those other American territories DC lacks its own Olympic committee. That is until now. Together with some friends and co-workers who live in the District we've started a movement called the District of Columbia Olympic Committee (DCOC). If the District is going to be lumped in with the other red-headed stepchildren of American representative democracy, we should at least be able to compete with our own Olympic teams like other territories. The first team we are organizing is curling, but we are looking for athletes for other sports for both the winter and summer games. |||| http://www.dcolympicteam.org/about/ WASHINGTON CITY PAPER, 1994: To most spectators of the Lillehammer Olympic opening ceremony, the things that stood out were the skiing fiddlers, unruly reindeer, and kings swathed in Goretex. But as the parade of nations passed the reviewing stand, Sam Smith, die-hard statehood advocate, full-time rabble rouser, and sometime editor of the Progressive Review, noted that something was amiss. Athletes from American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico strode proudly behind their territorial flags. While these semi-independent US colonies have their own Olympic teams, Washington does not. Once again, Smith realized, the nonvoting citizens of DC had been denied adequate representation. "Not only are we not part of the Union, we're not even allowed to play with the colonies. We're even discriminated among the non-self-governing territories of the US," Smith growls. "It's all part of the colonial mentality, of accepting things the way they are." . . . The oversight so enraged Smith that, by Monday morning, he had already founded and designed letterhead for the DC Olympic Organizing Committee (quickly renamed the Committee for a DC Team in the Olympics to avoid sounding too official), and appointed himself the "very interim chair." Armed with the slogan "Give Us Liberty or Give Us the Gold," Smith warmed up his fax and fired off a manifesto to local pols and industry bigwigs. . . Smith hopes parochial power brokers like [hardware magnate] John Hechinger, Jesse Jackson, and perhaps even [Redskins owner] Jack Kent Cooke will petition the International Olympic Committee to permit DC to compete in the next games. "Tonya Harding's lawyers got the Olympic Committee to roll over -- can you imagine Jesse Jackson and Jack Kent Cooke working in concert? You talk about the morality of Tonya Harding being allowed to compete in the Olympics, how about the immorality of DC not being allowed to compete?" he asks. EPILOGUE: Jack Kent Cooke never came aboard, but Jesse Jackson did after being button holed by your editor in National Airport -- long enough to write a supporting letter to Dr. Leroy Walker, President of the US Olympic Committee, right in the middle of the games. Dave Clarke, chair of the city council, also endorsed the idea. Unfortunately, Jackson's attention deficit disorder soon took over and nothing more was heard from him. Even more distressing was the failure of DC activists who, rather than rushing to the cause, bombarded your editor with requests to be on the team -- based on unsubstantiated and archaic claims of athletic prowess.
WASHINGTON POST DIDN'T ALWAYS NEED SUCH A LARGE STAFF JACK SHAFER, SLATE - The connection between quality and head count would seem intuitive, but a dip into the microfilm archives of the New York Times and Washington Post shows that decent newspapers have been produced with far fewer hands. In the last three or four decades, newsroom staffs have ballooned almost everywhere. Today's Times employs about 1,200 newsroom staffers and the Post about 800. But 35 years ago, each produced a quality daily with about half that number, according to Leon V. Sigal's 1973 study, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking. Sigal found that the Times employed 500 "reporters, editors, and copyreaders" and the Post about 400 at the time. Some of the expansion came in the establishment of distant bureaus. The Times had 15 national bureaus and 28 foreign capital bureaus in 1972. Today it has 11 national bureaus and 26 foreign. The 1972 Post had four national bureaus and 11 overseas. Today there are about a half-dozen domestic and 19 foreign bureaus. As you unspool summer of 1972 Post microfilm, you're struck by the relative reliance on stories from wire services and other newspapers. To pick a representative issue, I read the July 6, 1972, edition closely. It had two wire stories and one from the Manchester Guardian on Page One. The Post sports page even delegated coverage of the Baltimore Orioles, Washington's nominal big-league team after the departure of the Senators to Texas, to a wire service. The Post of yore ran about half the number of comics, and its TV listings were limited to a box of five local stations compared to the full page containing almost 100 channels today. Style had not yet morphed into a full daily feature section. A thin feature about Emmylou Harris stops 7 inches after its jump from the front of Style, and a wire story about Jacqueline Onassis winning a lawsuit over a paparazzi also played on the front. . . The Post gave about the same emphasis to national and foreign coverage in 1972 as it does today. Although the average Post story from 1972 is probably 25 percent shorter than today's, the national and foreign stories I read from the July 6, 1972, edition Post don't skimp on the day's events. . . By my personal measure, the national and foreign news published in the summer of 1972 by the Times and Post matches the current product, even though it is less "featurey." That both papers did fine work with half the current manpower should encourage serious readers-'even though it may depress journalists.
2007 GENTRIFICATION SUCCEEDS IN KICKING POOR OUT OF TOWN PAUL SCHWARTZMAN WASHINGTON POST - The number of low-income families obtaining mortgages to buy houses in the District has plummeted the past decade as property values have soared and the city has attracted more affluent residents, according to a new study. Ten years ago, 17 percent of District home buyers were low-income, which the study, by the Urban Institute, defines as a family of four with an income of $45,000 or less in current dollars. In 2005, the most recent year for which data were available, that rate had slipped to just over 4 percent, the study found. The decline has been especially pronounced in Ward 5, which the report defines as a mid-priced area that includes gentrifying Northeast neighborhoods including Brookland and Eckington. In 1997, about 33 percent of buyers seeking loans for properties in the ward were low-income, a level that fell to slightly more than 3 percent in 2005. At the same time, high-income families, or those earning more than $108,000, accounted for a third of all buyers in Ward 5 in 2005, up from 5 percent in 1997. . . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/25/AR2007062501693.html THE POST'S BUDDIES STOLE YOUR SCHOOL SYSTEM, NOW THEY WANT YOUR SKY A WHILE BACK, we warned you that the city's height limit was an approaching target of the developer corporados parading as advocates of smart growth. The Post has confirmed our fears with a major puff job on Christopher Leinberger, a developer parading as a socially conscious scholar at the Brookings Institution. Nothing will better symbolize that capture of Washington by the robber barons and the destruction of its soul than a lifting of height limitations that have helped give the city a global reputation as a special place. From the story: "The principal issue is land supply, he said. If additional land can be found, there might be no need to raise the height limit. If not, he said, D.C. leaders should consider lifting the limit around Metro stations that serve commuters from across the region, such as Dupont Circle, Union Station, Metro Center, the Navy Yard and, yes, Friendship Heights. "Taller buildings, he said, would lower prices and lead more residents and corporations to choose the city over gas-guzzling suburban sprawl. The threat of global warming makes the need to reconsider the height limit even more immediate, he said. "We have a moral imperative to increase density, to get us out of our cars," said Leinberger. . . "Civic leaders and preservationists recoil at the thought of lifting the restriction, saying high-rise buildings would spoil a low-lying, Parisian-style city planned more than 200 years ago by Pierre L'Enfant. . . To lift the limit in any one neighborhood, they say, would compromise the entire city. . . "Nevertheless, the pace of building in the city could make reconsideration of the limit unavoidable." So unless you share Leinberger's sick view that we have a moral obligation to destroy the city's grace in orde3r to provide developers with more space so they can build more high rises for which we don't have adequate streets or public transportation, you better get ready for a big fight. ANOTHER WASH POST ATTACK ON CITY'S HEIGHT LIMIT [As we have warned, the push for the Rosslynization of DC is underway and activist groups should stop organizing against it before it's too late] ROGER K LEWIS, WASHINGTON POST - Many years ago, I suggested in this column that there could be certain places in the District where height restrictions might be relaxed, where taller buildings could make aesthetic, functional and economic sense. With rigorous analysis and fine-grain, targeted planning, not broad-brush rezoning, the city could identify sites well suited for more intense use, increased density and higher structures. . . Washington Post columnist Jonathan Yardley took issue with my suggestion. Shortly after my column appeared, he wrote that any exception to D.C. height limits, no matter why or where, would open a door that should never be opened. He feared that such exceptions soon would become the rule, jeopardizing the city's historically unique scale and promising to make Washington a city of high-rises. In an article in The Post's Metro section earlier this month, staff writer Paul Schwartzman reported on yet another suggestion for taller buildings in appropriate D.C. locations, this time by Brookings Institution visiting fellow Christopher Leinberger. Leinberger's argument is essentially economic. Land available for development of commercial and residential space in the District is increasingly in short supply, while rising demand for space is forcing real estate prices up at an accelerating pace. Thus, he says, raising the height limit could increase the supply of developable space and ease pressure on prices. It also could help the District compete with suburbs for businesses and residents. . . Let's face it: Washingtonians continue
to believe strongly not only that height limits are sacrosanct,
but also that any attempt to change them is heresy. [In answer to Lewis' questions, because from SW urban renewal to the sports arena, planners have a record of here of imprudence and in treating the city like it was one big Monopoly game] URBAN DENSITY WITHOUT BIG BOX DEVELOPMENT CONCERNING THE PLANNED development at 5520 Wisconsin Avenue, a reader writes: ||| 1) How many residential buildings exist on Conn. Ave that are over 5 stories which support the low-rise, neighborhood serving retail? 2) If density is not focused on top of Metro stations, where is the logical place to house human beings in the coming decades? Should we pave more fields in the exurbs? At what point does the City recoup more of its investment in Metro by virtue of more taxes generated by more residents and business?. . . The NIMBY crowd is simply scaring people with sock-puppet arguments about traffic and parking when most of them have all but admitted they simply want no changes near their homes. The younger residents in the area are incredulous over this stubborn and myopic position. ||| The letter reflects the success that developers have had in dragging smart growth advocates on board their vessel. It also reflects some basic misunderstandings about urban density. Leaving aside the fact that such development is making DC a cold, boring, soulless city by attacking one of its core attributes - interesting, attractive and comfortable neighborhoods - there remains the fact that the solution being proposed is not going to have the effects claimed. It helps to recall that DC currently has a quarter of a million fewer residents than it did in 1950. You want urban density? We had it. The number of housing units, however, did not substantially decline with the population. There were only 3,000 fewer units in 2000 than in 1970. In other words, we could today house just about all those 250,000 lost residents without building another unit. Except for one thing. DC residents require far more (and grander) space these days than they did in the 1950s. DC has turned from a family to a singles town and with it the square footage seen as needed for each resident has grown. There is nothing particularly moral about building a high rise to compensate for these changes when a little downsizing would do the same thing. Further, it is strange, to say the least, to call someone a NIMBY because they don't want to go along with some developer's latest scheme. The term properly applies to those who oppose the proximity of a community asset like a fire station or a school, and not to those who don't care for the Rossylnization of DC. Another crucial point is that density can be easily achieved without big box apartments. It's been done for centuries in Europe. San Francisco is a closer example. So are parts of Washington. The tools include attached dwellings, accessory apartments, alley housing and low rise apartments over ground level reta |
