Editorials and Opinions

Georgetowner •

Nearly 60 years and roughly half a trillion inflation-adjusted dollars after President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid-Highway Act of 1956, most of us spend a significant chunk of our lives on Uncle Ike’s interstates.
Few imagined how the highway system would transform our lives and our nation. One who did was sociologist and critic Lewis Mumford, who wrote the New Yorker column “The Sky Line.” In addition to attacking highways as destroyers of city neighborhoods (and, in the long run, cities themselves), he deplored the overreliance on the private automobile that would result from such a massive investment:

“Now that motorcars are becoming universal, many people take for granted that pedestrian movement will disappear and that the railroad system will in time be abandoned; in fact, many of the proponents of highway building talk as if that day were already here, or if not, they have every intention of making it dawn quickly.”
Any Beltway commuter would recognize Mumford’s 1958 description of the self-defeating process by which the automobile’s promise of freedom leads to gridlock. Washingtonians – and other Americans in densely populated regions – have embraced a culture of traffic.

Twenty years after the highway act, the first segment of D.C.’s Metrorail system opened (Farragut North to Rhode Island Avenue). Probably the country’s greatest transit initiative of the second half of the 20th century, Metrorail went from a standing start to the second-busiest rapid transit system in the United States. It’s hard to imagine Washington without it or remember what the city was like before it.

Yet even as Metrorail continues to expand, what was once a world-class system has been allowed to deteriorate and, in certain respects, become obsolete – sometimes (as recently as this past January) with fatal consequences.

The same process is consuming our national rail system, even as ridership increases. Last week’s derailment in Philadelphia – which resulted in eight passenger deaths – is only the most tragic of numerous warning signals. Even if the investigation ends up calling it a case of human error, the incident is a tangle of contributing factors and if-onlys.

To what extent the deficiencies of Metrorail, Amtrak and other rail (and bus) systems are due to inadequate funding, inept management, insufficiently qualified and trained staff and bureaucratic snafus is debatable. However, all of these conditions are made worse by the absence of a culture of transit: a widely held belief that public transportation is of social and economic value.

Despite the multiplication of services that reduce the reliance on privately owned automobiles, such as Zipcar, Car2Go, Uber, Lyft and Capital Bikeshare; the implementation of bike lanes; and the lower rate of car-ownership among millennials associated with these trends, our obsession with personal vehicles continues to leave public transportation in the dust.

Just how destructive of our time and sanity, not to mention the environment does America’s culture of traffic need to become before a culture of transit – supporting the kind of reliable, efficient and affordable service taken for granted in Europe, Japan and elsewhere – gains traction?

Mark Plotkin • May 21, 2015

If you are a Democrat and you are not quite convinced – not truly “Ready for Hillary” – then Martin O’Malley wants you to sign on with him. One could make the case that he is the hometown candidate. He was born in Washington, D.C. He went to Gonzaga College High School on North Capitol Street, then to Catholic University.

His family moved to Silver Spring and O’Malley went to law school at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, where he stayed and got elected to the city council. After seven years on the council, he was elected mayor of Baltimore in 1999. He was only 36 years old. In 2002, Esquire magazine put him on its “Best & Brightest” cover and named him “Best Young Mayor in the Country.”

After two terms as mayor, O’Malley beat incumbent Republican Bob Ehrlich for governor and got reelected in 2010. After finishing his term, he is now going for the ultimate prize: the White House.

A keen student of politics, O’Malley is trying to pull a Carter ’76. The similarities are stunning. Jimmy Carter, after finishing his service as governor of Georgia, all but moved to Iowa and New Hampshire in 1975. He campaigned full-time for president. This was his only job and it paid off. Carter came from nowhere and beat an exceptional field of candidates, including someone I worked for, Morris Udall, a representative from Arizona.

O’Malley, who endorsed and campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2008, is positioning himself as the only clear alternative to Clinton, a younger version with a progressive mantle. He’s not afraid to take on the dynasty element, saying recently that the presidency is not some “crown” to be passed down, as if the U.S. were a monarchy. This comment is of course a swipe at Jeb Bush as well.

O’Malley’s strategy is to make sure Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts does not get into the race. He wants the economic populist brand to himself. At the same time, he wants to be perceived not as left or loony as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont or as stolid as former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb. O’Malley’s desire, above all, is for Democratic Party activists to view him as electable in the November 2016 general election.

The present crisis in Baltimore will highlight O’Malley’s tenure as mayor and his policy of “zero-tolerance.” This might cause him some unforeseen difficulty.

But the 52-year-old politician is a charmer. He enjoys being Martin O’Malley. It won’t hurt when he picks up his guitar and starts strumming one of his Celtic favorites. He is just hoping that you will like the tune he’s playing and sing along.

Political analyst Mark Plotkin is a contributor to the BBC on American politics and a contributor to TheHill.com.

Georgetowner •

We are fast coming up on the celebration of Memorial Day, the long weekend that is a signal and a symbol for so many things in the lives of Americans.

In America, Memorial Day means remembering, an ending and a beginning, gatherings at memorials and cemeteries, at parade routes and in your or someone else’s backyard. It means round-the-clock war movies on Turner Classic Movies. It means that school’s out, summer is starting and baseball is being played at every level and on many fields in heartland America and here, too.
Every town in America has a cemetery where veterans of our too-many wars are memorialized by headstones, angels and dates, and many towns have their parades – big, medium and small – characterized by the family of man, some distant or recent memories of loss and heroism and by the total lack of self-consciousness of the marchers.

Here in Washington, Memorial Day inevitably means a little more, because we have our own wall of remembrance here, still reaching out from mirrored stone at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Here are the battle wreaths and theaters of war at the National World War II Memorial, and here and everywhere are busts of men and generals, and the stark, solemn graves on the expanses of green at Arlington National Cemetery.

Generals will come out, and so will the president, and men old and not-so-old will don uniform and medals and roam the grounds near the fountains of the World War II Memorial, their numbers dwindling, the green and brown jackets worn, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren increasing the multitudes.

This is our national memorial by the pool and the trees, the Korean War platoon still seeming to move uphill with grit, the site of the small World War I Memorial, the picnic lawns and speeches and taps and the current soldiers standing squared away and tall, the newspapers still carrying rumblings of war in far away places.

Memorial Day weekend is not so much about losses as it is about individual sacrifice. With all unbounded respect, we do not celebrate triumphs and victories and defeats here as if wars were won and lost on playing fields. We respect the memory of people who answered a need and call, for hearth and country, and gave up, not willingly, but with fight and courage, their lives, leaving behind the rest of their unlived lives among us all.

We ought to really think and let it wash over us as we watch the parade, all the proceedings and flags and the tanks and jeeps and the muskets and rifles and politicians among us. There are heroes among us, remembered, and men and women just as heroic, protecting our communities, like policemen who do things right and fall in the line of duty, or D.C. Fire Lt. Kevin McRae, who died just after fighting a fire in Shaw.

You’ll see the others marching in tandem from long ago, the thousands dead in valor down to our own centuries. Lincoln presides over all in this corner of the city, looking across the mall and the pool at the thousands of us, visitors and the folks who live here.
And here they come, the drum and the fife, the blue coats and Billy Yanks, marines and airmen and sailors and grunts. And the people will bring what they died for: the families, the kids, the T-shirts, the car keys and pride, their photo IDs and precious phones and the memories, some of them, of men and women they lost.

The 90 somethings will wander with their families at the memorial, the motorcycles and tanned, grizzled faces from Vietnam, leather vests and ponytails, rolling like thunder.

And then, some part of that time, the old pictures will come out, from a scrapbook or a computer file. There will be a different, sweet and dusty parade in the neighborhood, smoke coming from the barbecue. And on Capitol Hill, they will gather for the yearly concert, and then the long summer commences in familiar heat, and beaches and sparklers and hoses beckon, in a time when the need for heroes remains strong.

At the memorials, at night, they are all at rest, remembered.

the Georgetowner Editorial Board • April 30, 2015

We miss you, Joe. It has been just about 10 years since reserve police officer Joe Pozell was struck by a distracted driver as he was directing traffic in the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street and later died of his injuries at the hospital. Joe was a true master at his job, and the traffic flow was the better for his efforts. No, driving through Georgetown back then was not a breeze, but it was a bit more manageable. Today, it is safe to call the intersection an absolute nightmare that is damaging the local business community as well as squeezing every drop of joy from commuters and tourists, whether they are behind the wheel of a car, on a bus, bike or on foot.

Traversing this intersection – recognized as one of the best dangerous in the city — can sometimes mean as many as five full light cycles to move a block or so to clear the intersection. It matters little if the driver is going straight, making a left or right turn.

The “why” of the situation is clear. Traffic flow through the intersection is constantly hampered by selfish and inconsiderate drivers blocking the box, distracted pedestrians walking against lights, taxis slowing to a crawl before making a turn as they hunt for customers, buses making their wide turns while everyone works to navigate around double-parked cars and trucks.

A fix that works can be seen the few times a year when traffic cops are on-hand to guide the throngs through this vital intersection. Their presence makes a real difference. A whistle blow and stern look from these traffic officers has the effect of stopping even the aggressive driver from trying to muck things up. Finding a way to fund those cops on a daily basis – at least at the busiest times – must be found, and quickly. It is an all too easy to simply throw in the towel and say traffic in the District is just bad. There’s no argument there; it is bad. But looking back to Joe Pozell with his arms out and directing traffic, as if conducting an orchestra proves that the traffic cop in the street makes all of the difference.

the Georgetowner Editorial Board • April 28, 2015

The college entrance to the Corcoran, on New York Avenue just in from 17th Street, leads to the semicircular Frances and Armand Hammer Auditorium. With its Doric-columned perimeter, it is one of the loveliest small auditoriums in the District.

Above the Hammer, sharing its D-shaped plan, is an inviting exhibition space -– for some years the Corcoran’s art library -– known as the Hemicycle Gallery. A longer climb up the New York Avenue stairs takes you to painting studios under the roof, with copper-framed skylights. It could easily be late-19th-century Paris.

Which makes sense, because Ernest Flagg (1857-1947), architect of the 1897 Corcoran Gallery of Art, knew late-19th-century Paris well. Based on his École des Beaux-Arts training, he designed sequences of amazingly inventive, sometimes breathtaking spaces behind the Corcoran’s formidable marble façade.

Only the most obviously ceremonial of these spaces, and those in the 1925 addition by Charles Platt (1861-1933) –- not the Hammer Auditorium, not the Hemicycle Gallery, not the rooftop painting studios, not the progression of galleries that National Gallery of Art Director Earl “Rusty” Powell famously called “arguably the most beautiful galleries of any museum in the United States” -– are marked in blue on the floor plan that the George Washington University submitted on March 26 to the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board.

Blue shading indicated the spaces that the university considers acceptable for historic designation. At the March meeting, the nine-member board, chaired by Gretchen Pfaehler, postponed until April 23 the decision whether to extend the designation to part or all of the Corcoran’s interior. (The building’s exterior is already landmarked.)

The Corcoran gave up its independence last year in the face of long-standing financial challenges. GW acquired the 17th Street and Fillmore School buildings and assumed the operations of the Corcoran College of Art and Design (It was announced this week that Fillmore, in Georgetown, is under contract to be purchased by S&R Foundation).

The National Gallery of Art took control of the collection. In the Corcoran’s galleries, it plans to show both contemporary art and works representative of the Corcoran legacy.

This Solomonic division of an important cultural institution was tragic, but not as tragic as if the Corcoran’s landmark building had been sold for commercial development and its collection entirely dispersed. GW and the National Gallery have the potential to be outstanding stewards of the Corcoran’s treasures: the art collection, the 17th Street building and the scholars, studio faculty, art educators and others who made the college a uniquely stimulating place to study art.

We call upon GW, now moving on several fronts to expand its activity in the arts, to respect the 17th Street building as a great work of American architecture, inside and out, while investing in its future as a educational facility for its students and the public.

the Georgetowner Editorial Board • April 9, 2015

This Earth Day, let’s get rid of greenwashing. We’re fed up with companies pretending their products are green to dupe paying customers. Examples abound for all types of greenwashed products in the U.S., from shampoos and detergents, to meats and vegetables, to electronics and clothes, to cars and oil products, and even to plastics (water bottles and trash bags!) and paper products(!).

American consumers are all too eager to buy products with a green sheen, and companies are happy to serve the market with products that deceive with “green” or “natural” labels or packaging design. Consumers are being “greenmailed,” if you will, into buying products that claim to be more environmentally friendly than competitors. Well, they aren’t.

“Natural” and “all natural” mean nothing. Plastics aren’t green. Paper products, unless made primarily with recycled material, are not green. (For example, the super soft toilet paper increasingly found in grocery stores is so soft because it is made from ancient trees that are hundreds of years old.) Shampoos, conditioners, lotions and makeup made with petroleum or coal products are not “natural.” Laundry and dish detergents that contain countless toxic chemicals cannot be “green.” There’s not such thing as a “green” car. Even Priuses and electric cars run on fossil fuel and are manufactured with precious metals often ripped from the earth. Home appliances that save energy are better for the environment than clunker predecessors, but they still use substantial amounts of energy, usually made by burning fossil fuels. The list goes on and on.

As consumers, we expect more from these companies than the way they shamelessly hawk their environmentally degrading products. Companies, please drop the pretenses and be honest about your products’ impact on the environment. Show us a little transparency for the customers who spend millions on your products.

We know companies are hesitant to do this on their own because of American capitalism’s twisted incentives. So, let’s urge them on. Large companies are increasingly responsive through Twitter and other social media outlets. So, let’s call them out and tell them that their “all-natural” dish soaps and pesticides are ruining our waterways, that their paper products are crushing our most pristine forests, that their plastic is poisoning our sea life and that their appliances are burning up our atmosphere. It’s time to kill greenwashing.