Editorials and Opinions

Gary Tischler • March 28, 2013

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s an election coming up. It’s yet another special election for the at-large seat vacated by D.C. City Council Chairman Phil Mendelson when he became […]

Georgetowner • March 26, 2013

Georgetowner •

In case you haven?t noticed, there?s an election coming up.

It?s yet another special election for the at-large seat vacated by D.C. City Council Chairman Phil Mendelson when he became chairman. The election is April 23, the field is large, the turnout is expected to be low, which it shouldn?t be, but probably will be, given the track records of past elections.

This particular election, though, has the potential to be a bellwether election for what is a city in a state of flux and change, and surprisingly?given the economies surrounding jurisdictions and across the country?with a robust economy and a substantial budget surplus. It occurs at a time when the major issue still seems to be ethics?past infringements by the likes of former Chairman Kwame Brown and Ward 5 Councilman Harry Thomas Jr., the latter languishing in prison, as well as the recent reprimand of Ward One Councilman Jim Graham, and the continued cloud of the District Attorney Office?s ongoing investigation of Mayor Vincent Gray?s 2010 mayoral campaign. Mayor Gray, with a rousing State of the District address, is sounding confident these days, while some challengers are lining up to shoot for his job, notably among them Ward 4 Councilwoman Muriel Bowser, who officially announced that she will run. Others?Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells and Ward 2 Council Jack Evans?are said to be exploring (Wells) or not saying no (Evans).

The race could be an indication how thing will go in the 2014 mayoral race, and may have a lot to say about where the power is in a shifting and changing city population on issues such as schools, the homeless, what to do with the surplus, statehood, relationships with congress, and affordable housing, as well as crime.

The race has attracted some predictable folks?Michael Brown, for instance, after being ousted from his at-large seat in the last special election in which he ran as an independent, is back again, this time as a Democrat, his true calling, we presume, since he started out that way. Anita Bonds, a familiar face and figure as a government official and adviser, for years, working with Mayors Barry and Williams, is holding down the seat as an interim council member and has drawn some advantage of name recognition for that. And back again is Patrick Mara, a Republican and a school board member who was narrowly defeated by Vincent Orange in a previous election.?

*The Georgetown Business Association will host an at-large candidates forum at Tony & Joe?s Restaurant, April 1, 6:30 p.m.*

Gary Tischler •

I came to live in Washington DC in 1975 after living and working on two different daily newspapers in Northern California for ten years. Looking back from the vantage point of the intervening years of four decades, it seems to me now that I had landed squarely in the middle of a railroad juncture one coming from the 1960s and the other chugging forward to what lay ahead.
It’s impossible not to think of two times and places—the 1980s and Ronald Reagan’s coming America and the roiling, revolutionary 1960s of peace and love, war and anti-war, Washington, D.C., the political and policy capitol of the United States and the San Francisco Bay Area, the epicenter of what comes next, the caretaker of hip, cool, rock and roll and protest politics, where the Pacific Ocean made up one of the seas to shining sea—more different and more connected at the same time. Neither city was typical of the makeup in function and population of the great majority of this country. Being there, and then here, felt like an exercise, at least initially in straddling not only the center of the 1970s, but two contrarian attitudes of what was important.
By 1975, things had already happened here that we did not quite pay so much attention to out there. Californians—the explosively liberal North and the entrench conservatives of the South and mid-state—had always seen Washington as the city of government, monuments, not as a place where real people actually lived. Things had happened there—very big 1970s things like Watergate, which we saw, often as the fall of the despised Richard Nixon and his ilk. He was one of us, after all, and after an ill-fated gubernatorial run, had blasted the press and said “You know have Richard Nixon to kick around any more.” As far as we know, somebody else had kicked him around.

In Northern California, protests against the war, against the government, for women’s rights, seemed common place as if everything leftist and worthy was invented in Berkeley. Turns out they hadn’t.

In California in the early 1970s, you were inured to a lot of things—the presence of drugs (pot, cookies laced with acid and hashish) at certain parties, the decline of the hippie movement in the Haight, and the rise of the dominantly gay Castro district). We saw the end of the Vietnam up close and personal as transport planes full of children rescued in the last days of Saigon landed in Oakland. On that occasion, I interviewed a man over coffee as he talked about his son, who had been killed in the last month of the war.

Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States—now it was official, I had come full circle. I lived in the Bay Area during all eight years that Mr. Reagan was governor there. I had met him once, and he had remembered my name in five minutes, after answering a question of mine about Watergate by not answering it. He had followed to what was now:
Home.

The 1970s were over.

Jack Evans • February 28, 2013

I wrote in my last column about the new Council period and a number of my priorities, such as education, public safety, and affordable housing. One of the things these goals have in common is that they are substantially impacted by the budget decisions that the Mayor and the Council will make over the next several months. As Chairman of the Finance and Revenue Committee, this half of the year is often my busiest.

I am hopeful that the Mayor’s budget will include funding for these items as well as for expanded library hours, and that it will include sensible tax relief now that we can afford it. This is a time when everyone is expecting hundreds of millions of dollars of “new” revenue to our government to be announced due to higher-than-expected tax collections as our economy improves. In light of that information, it simply doesn’t make sense to continue our plan to begin to tax out-of-state municipal bonds this year, a tax which largely impacts seniors. I believe I have the Mayor’s support on this issue, but it will help if he and my colleagues on the Council hear from you prior to and during budget considerations.

I am also hopeful that the Mayor will finally sunset the supposedly temporary increase in the sales tax. In case you don’t know the story, the government raised the sales tax from 5.75% to 6% several years ago with the promise that it would sunset by now. Unfortunately, when the government thought it needed the money, it simply repealed the sunset provision. Now that everyone knows we have the money, we should keep our promise to lower this tax. All my colleagues should be able to agree on this, as the sales tax is regressive, disproportionately impacting those who have the least disposable income.

Before the budget is released, we first go through the performance oversight process. Over the past two weeks, I have sent a number of questions to the agencies under my purview to collect data on agency structure and recent spending. After I review what has worked and what has not, I will be in a better position to make recommendations on adjustments to the agency budgets for next year. I am also pleased to welcome the Commission on Arts & Humanities and Destination DC as new additions to my committee oversight responsibility this year. Thanks for your support during this process, and please feel free to reach out to my office as well as to my colleagues to share your views. ?

David Post •

A glimpse, by definition, is a brief preview of what lies ahead.

The last quarter of 2012, last October through December, provided a glimpse of what happens when federal spending is cut.
The economy shrunk. Not much – only 0.1% – but it shrunk. When the economy shrinks for two straight quarters, a recession is declared. That doesn’t have to happen unless we make it happen.

During the third quarter of 2012 (last July, August, and September), the economy grew at 3.1%, almost the nation’s average of 3.2% since the end of World War II.

Over the past three months, the private sec- tor did pretty well. Consumer spending went up. Durable goods like appliances and furniture al- most doubled. Investment in equipment and soft- ware increased six times. Even housing invest- ment increased.

What went down? Federal government spending declined at a 15% rate due to a drop in defense spending. In fact, government spending has declined in 10 of the last 12 quarters slowing the country’s overall economic growth.

Government spending has kept the economy out of recession since 2009. The United States is the only economy on earth, of any size, that has grown in the past three years. Austerity – reductions in government spending – hasn’t worked anywhere in the world except arguably in two small countries.

Greece and Spain are getting a great deal of attention for their economic woes. Their budget cuts have led to downward spirals and 25% un- employment. Great Britain adopted an austerity plan last year and just entered its THIRD recession in five years.
The poster children for “austerity works” are Estonia and Latvia, two Baltic states tucked be- tween Russia, Poland, and Scandinavia and together about the size of Ohio. Their combined population is about 3 million, a little more than half the D.C. metro area. Though their economies are now growing, they are still suffering with unemployment rates of 12-15%.

Government spending matters. Reductions in unemployment benefits, food stamps, and social security hurt small businesses and grocery stores. When housing assistance is reduced, the pain is felt by both landlords with more vacancies and lower rents and by local governments with lower property values and reduced tax collections. Reduced highway construction today puts construction workers out of work and reduces economic growth tomorrow.

Nonetheless, Congress is currently focused only on cutting spending with several deadlines quickly approaching. In two weeks, the “sequester” – automatic across-the-board spending cuts that Congress imposed on the nation when it couldn’t agree on what to cut – take effect. In late March, the nation hits the debt limit – like a credit card limit – that would not allow the government to pay the bills it promised to pay a few months ago. That’s like buying a car and then telling the bank you’re not going to make the payments.
By disagreeing on budget priorities, Congress has kicked the can down the road for three years. Oddly, that’s probably been best for the economy.

The last few months both in the U.S. and Great Britain provide a glimpse into the future. What do we really want? Austerity or more can- kicking? ?

Georgetowner •

Well, the District Council went and did what Chairman Phil Mendelson said it was going to do. They reprimanded Councilman Jim Graham, D-Ward 1, over accusations that he attempted to intervene in a city lottery contract dispute four years ago. The vote was 11-2; Graham and Ward 8 Council- man Marion Barry were the lone nay votes.

Yet, it probably didn’t settle the issue, except to put a stain on Graham’s council record. Graham was also stripped of his power to oversee District liquor licenses and alcohol issues on the Human Services Committee, which he chairs. They did not strip him of his chairmanship.

The reprimand followed several investigations of Graham and the D.C. Lottery contract. The D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability concluded that they had found “substantial evidence” that Graham had broken the District’s code of employee conduct but did not sanction him, according to a Washington Post report. Another independent investigation by the Metro board, of which Graham was then a member, concluded that Graham had improperly mingled his Council and board duties. In addition, there’s an ongoing investigation of the lottery contract process by the U.S. attorney, not to mention numerous negative editorials in the Washington Post about Graham’s activities and roles.

Graham promised to fight the reprimand at the hearing but remained relatively silent, indicating that the is- sue was now closed.

“There’s the saying, ‘All’s well that ends well,’ ” he told WRC 4 reporter Tom Sherwood. “Well, all’s well that ends.” Graham sounded more than anything relieved and argued that the voters would have their say on him in the 2014 elections, when apparently he will run for his seat yet again.

Mendelson chose to have Graham reprimanded it seems from here because quite a bit of how Graham operates in his various roles give not so much the fact of wrong doing or ethical wrong doing, but the appearance of them.
Often, Graham’s defense has been to claim loudly that has not been indicted or that he was not the target of an investigation, as in the taxi commission bribe scandal which involved his chief of staff.

Ward One voters have repeatedly voted Graham back into office. Newly elected At-large Councilman David Gross said he would not support him next time around.

It seems though that there was little substance behind a public reprimand or even taking away his committee duties. The act smacked a little bit of grandstanding on the Council’s part, designed to do nothing more except perhaps to give the appearance of a serious smackdown and the appearance that the Council is finally serious about ethical matters, given Kwame Brown, Harry Thomas, Jr., Mayor’s Gray’s campaign and other matters.

This is not to suggest that Graham is innocent of everything he’s been accused of, but rather that he should be proven guilty of something. In the very least, the Council might have ordered an investigation of its own—by a legal entity or attorney—as it did in the case of Marion Barry, who was censured after such an investigation of his role in a legal services contract in 2010. That hearing, conducted and ordered by then Council Chairman Vincent Gray had the gravitas it and Barry de- served. Not, apparently, going to happen. ?

Georgetowner •

The Roman Catholic Church will soon be without a pope. Pope Benedict XVI renounced his absolute powers as if a last lesson to his flock: for them and the church, the Bishop of Rome freely released his grip on the papal crosier because of his failing health.

The 265th pope succeeded the popular John Paul II. While both are seen as high intellects, Benedict often seemed to play Truman to John Paul’s FDR.

The seemingly mild-mannered pope, nevertheless, pursued his goals, sounding conservative or liberal in his speeches and readings because he thinks on a different moral scale than mere secular political observers.

Read Benedict’s encyclical on love or his essays on Jesus Christ.

As the Vatican is vacant of its leader, all manner of rumors, accusations and grief are let loose. One can imagine a scene from “Angels & Demons.”

The revelation of pedophile and perverted priests — and the sinful cover-up by superiors — has poisoned the church. Indeed, for this alone, some condemn the oldest followers of Western Christendom. Regardless, a comprehensive solution must be applied now.

The College of Cardinals is set to do its primary duty. Whom will it choose? Ask the Holy Spirit.

For us, some of whom are Catholic, it is a time of reflection, supercharged by Lent, looking forward to a new pope for Easter.
For all of us living in Washington, look to your Federal City, bookended by high-powered Catholic institutions — Georgetown University on the west and Catholic University, Trinity University and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on the east.

These educators are impressive influencers, grounded in religion and guided by art and science, that look toward the masonic overlay of Washington’s architecture. They know more than you know, and there is a reason that they are here.

In the coming weeks, much speculation will be offered about the papacy and the church. Reserve your own judgment, and let some prayers and thanks come into your own thoughts.

Hail and farewell, Benedict XVI. Auf wiedersehen, Joseph Ratzinger.

What is next for this 2,000-year Christian institution, full of human achievements, injuries and foibles?

Expect a miracle. ?