Walking the Dog: News and Perspective
• June 18, 2013

We live in a city full of news; it seems sometimes to come like rain from above, buzzing on television, or erupting from below. The world shakes with chaos and revolution in the Middle East and we feel the vibrations in our city.

The Middle East, the crowds and demonstrators in the streets of Cairo, the fall of Mubarak, the fall of Tunisia’s government and the civil war now raging in Libya are the kinds of things that reverberate in our city, keep the lights out in the White House, and in numerous embassies.

It’s the kind of news that preys on the mind as we wake up in the morning, brew the coffee, get dressed, pick up the morning Post and check for big-headline updates.

It stays with you when you walk the dog, a buzz in the head, the stuff of neighborhood conversation, WORLD news. Other news follows the buzz and the talk—while Libya is still on the mind and Egypt remains shaky, the news closer to home about a major, brewing scandal concerning our newly minted mayor sends ripples through the two blocks or so that Bailey and I navigate every morning, noon, evening and night. The election signs are gone now from the yards, but the memory of everyone’s votes and arguments lingers in the morning air, especially now.

We have other news, of course, news of our bodies faltering, news of the newly elected firebrands across the country clashing with teachers unions and policemen and firemen. You think of that around here. The street is full of people who work in education, as teachers, as policy makers, as wonks and educators. And Bailey’s mom is a teacher herself, so you can manage the discussion that lingers, following us on our walks.

On our street we have a firehouse, and we have police cars patrolling and lately handing out a spate of parking tickets. That’s news too. A while back, a man walked by me who I used to see walking his wife in the sunlight, gently guiding her in a summer dress back in August. He stopped and turned around to tell me that his wife had passed away over the Christmas holidays. “I thought you should know,” he said. The woman had appeared frail, but her husband always seemed steadfast in the way he held her hand, and so we greeted each other with interest and courtesy. That too was news.

On my walks with Bailey, the world conflates sometimes, only to open up wide when I see one of our neighbors. There was the retired diplomat who spent a good deal of time in the Middle East including a stint as consul to the American Embassy in Cairo. He was worried about the fate of people he used to work with abroad and concerned about where all this will end. Watching television, you guess, he’s seeing streets and places he saw every day back in his time. Down the street I see the wife of a journalist who works for a Swedish news agency covering the United States, now endlessly preoccupied with the reaction to the news abroad.

The news: the weather is much on the mind of anchors these days, with their furrowed brows, their ill-guised thrill at being this close as well as this safely distant from the proximity of disaster. For people around here, it means the possibility of flood, the day-after-day cold, the endless winter. It is not healthy not to complain about the weather; exult in the rare balmy day. The big news also brings changes around the neighborhood: the price of gasoline at the nearby end-of-the-block Exxon station, always expensive, is inching toward $4 a gallon, regular.

Bailey, who is 14 years old now, has his own take on the news. It is closer to the ground, and he brings me in that direction too. For Bailey, the oncoming rain means avoiding walking in puddles in order to do his thing, something not always possible. The news to him is the first budding trees, the cawing of the blackbirds and an occasional hawk. Dogs who are pets are torn, I think, between trying to discern the feelings of their owners as they navigate the news of the world, and focusing on what’s important to them: bark of trees, bark and scent of other dogs, rumors and gossip of their comings and goings written in the blades of grass.

When I stop to talk with people these days, the talk is not so much about sunny days, or the lack of sunny days, but about the what-in-the-world-is-going-on reaction to the Gray-Brown imbroglio, touched by either a certain disappointment or the I-told-you-so reaction. Bailey sits and sniffs it out—good mood, bad mood for dad?

But what he really cares about at the moment is the onrushing Bassett hound or Lulu, the giant schnauzer, still a puppy, across the street standing up like a flailing horse.

It’s not that he doesn’t have feelings about history, time and such: when Tina, the Yorkie down the street, returns from abroad, he is beside himself with persistence and wagging, although it’s often ignored. He hasn’t forgotten that Rosie the terrier and he have a long-standing feud going back eight years that erupts into instant snarling the moment they sense each other’s presence on the sidewalk.

Walking Bailey on the block gives me both opportunities to talk too much about everything with others, and perspective. He teaches me to downsize every now and then, not be so intent on worrying about how the eventually new Egyptian government will deal with Israel, but concentrate on the trees that were only recently winter naked, now becoming populated with as yet unopened buds. It means something: renewal, a process that will radically change the view on the sidewalk, if not the talk.

Bailey teaches me to look closely and closer to home, as I’m swept up in the grand view, the big news stories that are so much a part of this city, where they seep into the neighborhoods of daily life like rain and sunshine.

I have news for him too, although I suspect he had already sniffed it out in the casual nosing among his friends. The mighty Mubarak may have fallen from power, and tyrants an dictators sleep less with history knocking on their door, but here we have the news that a little white Maltese, whom I liked to call “Little Bailey,” has passed away, managing to last life out for 19 years, a mighty old age for such a small little guy. And later still, we hear the news from the owner of Andy, a beautiful dog with a lustrous brown and white mane, that he too has gone where all dogs go due to an enlarged spleen.

Somewhere on our walks, if Bailey doesn’t know, he’ll figure it out, by scent or by absence, that his friends are gone, that he will not see them again forever. As for me, I knew Little Bailey and Andy better than Mubarak, better than Charlie Sheen, better than Sulaimon Brown, and I feel their loss and their absence on our walks.

I know that Little Bailey perked up time and again when he saw my Bailey kicking into an uncharacteristic run. And I know that I found Andy’s graceful trot, his mournful eyes begging for a treat, things of beauty. Bailey and I will miss them.

And that’s the news today.

The Last ‘Walking the Dog’: a Tribute to Bailey and Barney
•

Barney, who fulfilled the role of first dog and his master’s best friend for two terms at the White House, died a few weeks ago of lymphoma at the age of 12.

President George W. Bush made the announcement in straightforward, affectionate terms: “Laura and I are sad to announce that our Scottish Terrier, Barney, has passed away. The little fellow had been suffering from lymphoma and after twelve and a half years of life, his body could not fight off the illness. Barney and I enjoyed the outdoors. He loved to accompany me when I fished for bass at the ranch. He was a fierce armadillo hunter. Barney guarded the South Lawn entrance of the White House as if he were a Secret Service agent. He wandered the halls of the West Wing looking for treats from his many friends.”

From the former president’s tone, it’s pretty clear that Barney had many friends. In his own way, as first dogs tend to do, he became famous—the “Barney cam,” where he displayed his eager demeanor and outstanding ears and trying to upstage things at the first lady’s unveiling of the White House Christmas decorations simply by walking by.

Around that time, we found out that Smokey, the black lab and cocker mix who had best friend to Bailey, our Bichon Frise, during his neighborhood days, had passed away. We lost Bailey, about whom I’d written in several “Walking the Dog” columns in The Georgetowner, late last spring to cancer which was discovered too late for any succor or relief.

I did not write about Bailey on the occasion of his passing. I am doing so now for one last “Walking the Dog”— or until we should bring another dog into our lives, a subject about which there has been much discussion among our friends and neighbors.

The passing of Smokey, and Bailey, Woody, and Navy and Gertie and Spot, and the Maltese whom everybody called Little Bailey at the age of 19, and Jazzy and others, and, yes, if we may, Barney, because he was a part of our larger neighborhood in the city, marked the passing of a generation of dogs who were a part of our lives, directly or by association. Some, like Eddie, remain, but few are left.

Bailey lived to be 15 and spent all but the early months of his life in our Lanier Heights section of Adams Morgan. There are new dogs, newly minted dog friends, pups who tug their owners and pull them to the dog park, which did not exist when Bailey came to the neighborhood. There are new children, too, some of whom will want dogs. In case I didn’t mention it, this is a dog neighborhood. Bailey, for reasons I still find a mystery but appreciate with great feeling and affection, was a presence in the neighborhood. His absence is felt, as I’m sure Barney was at the White House and on the Bush ranch.

This is the nature of the beast—these small and large beings who are not beasts, but our pets, companions and unalloyed silent best friends. They will devastate us with the regularity of predicted loss, and, oddly, knowing what we know, there is no way of avoiding the pain of the loss or predicting its length, nature and specifics. In our world, in the neighborhood and all across the country, pets have become not only a cottage industry, but beings who are constantly written about, talked about, gossiped about in the hood, studied scientifically, and speculated about: who are these guys and girls anyhow and why do they mean so much to so many of us?

I can say this, and I suspect it is true for the Bush family—the loss of a dog is a death in the family, and around here, a death in the neighborhood.

I don’t mean to make so much of Bailey in terms of his neighbors, but I suspect it is true still. My four daily walks—rain, shine, the seasons, the weather, the talk, the other dogs, meetings and greetings—regulated my life. Bailey was the best alarm clock I had, the best weatherman, the best judge of conditions, the best communicator of need, the most patient soul in some ways. He was my enabler, in the sense he let me discover the neighborhood, let me think about how to write stories, or entertain ideas or receive them on the walk. He made me notice all of it—homes and hearth, the air, the change in temperature, the age and sudden absence of trees, the spots in the grass. Dogs don’t sniff idly. They dig out news in the grass and on the side of trees. They communicate in the air.

Dogs chasten your sense of self-importance—Bailey did that so routinely and without seeming to that I swear he was smiling in there somewhere. Bailey was instantly recognized by name. I would hear people hollering, “Hey, Bailey,” as if it were a daily song. Bailey was diffident about fame—he had it and seemed to know it—but he was not needy that way. He was not a seeker of strokes, pets, treats, or God forbid, hugs, and he was not a slurper like the happy labs and goldens. His appeal was simple: he was unforgivably adorable and cute—big black bottomless eyes set in a white furry face and body and facial expressions that could haves gotten him acting jobs. Oddly, he had an opportunity to do just that: they were filming the Will Smith thriller “Enemy of the State” on our street in the late 1990s, and had not yet cast the lone little dog part. The AD eyed Bailey, saying “He’s a cute little guy.” Bailey promptly ran his leash around my legs five times giving the AD pause and eliciting the comment, “Kind of hyper, isn’t he?” There went Hollywood. I should add that Bailey was hardly ever hyper except when he went into a mysterious, crazed run called the “Bichon blitz.”

I spent more time with Bailey than anyone I know. When I was working on stories, he would come into my office in the back and find several sleeping spots—under the computer, in the closet, by the bookcase and so on. He inspired me often—not just in writing about him or dogs, but about the neighborhood. What he did and how he conducted himself made me think and often entertained me. The dog who barely tolerated most people except to give them 30 seconds to admire him, discovered two of the residents of Joseph House, the hospice for the homeless in our neighborhood and routinely ran up flights of steep stairs to see them. I think he was a contrarian: outside of Smokey, Navy, and a few other dogs, his best pals were cats with whom he played, a Siamese on our block and Tiny, who would lay in wait for him under parked cars.

It doesn’t end, either. Henry, a dog walker and neighborhood guy, asked us about our dog future, then began talking about Bailey recently. “That Bailey,” he said. “He was a legend.”

And just the other day, I ran into a neighbor I hadn’t seen in a while, who was taking his little daughter out. Just as I left, I heard her voice: “But where’s the doggy?”

Smokey was his friend—he saw him after a year-long interval and they wagged and sniffed, but not forever. They were older, after all, no point in making a fuss. Bailey had once put his 14-pound body between Smokey and two large terriers who had gone after Smokey. There they were side by side, and Stanley, Smokey’s dad, said, “There they are, the salt and pepper team.”

I’d offer my condolences to President Bush, but I know how he feels. There were news photos of Bush and Barney—which sounds like a law firm, and maybe if you added Bailey on to it, it would be—and in both Bush is smiling and grinning, Barney darkly mysterious.

Bush said, “He never discussed politics and was always a faithful friend”.

Here’s to Barney. Here’s to Bailey. Barney and Bailey—we all know what that sounds like.

[gallery ids="101172,142526,142522" nav="thumbs"]

Behold Our American Heritage, Right Here at Home
• June 6, 2013

With Flag Day, June 14, and Father’s Day, June 16, soon upon us, we find ourselves in a sentimental and all-American mood.
In Georgetown, we know of that man who lived here and penned that great American paean to the flag and its power, “the Star-Spangled Banner,” our national anthem. Opened but 20 years ago this September, that park on M Street next to Key Bridge honors Francis Scott Key and the American flag.

Our American fathers, whether of the historical kind or our very dearly own, we hold close here in Georgetown and also hold a secret: history, while of the past, lives on and teaches much more of the present.

For many, our fathers have departed this world and live in our thoughts every hour. For others, they are strong, dutiful, sensible men who guide and have guided their children to become complete persons as well as patriotic, thoughtful Americans. It seems a coincidence these special days for our flag and our dad are but days apart. Yet, perhaps, it is that wonderful American moment when this is the way it is to be.

Meanwhile, we look around our neighborhood and see friends striving to make our town and city better everyday. Whether it is those honored last week by the Citizens Association of Georgetown (shown below), or those working to make the business district more appealing with events, such as the Taste of Georgetown, and public discussion of the future, or those keeping the parks useful and in top shape, such as Volta Park, or another business group, ready to salute the late Jim Weaver, or those teaching the young and sending them forth into the world, this is our town. Tudor Place offers wonderful children’s programs. We unveiled Percy Plaza at the new Waterfront Park to memorialize Georgetowner Sen. Charles Percy. Still, our longest-serving, dedicated councilman Jack Evans, wants to do more, too: he wants to be the Mayor of Washington, D.C.

Accomplished persons in a superlative place, that is Georgetown, our part of the American dream, and it is our proud American heritage. We are grateful and know what Americans do: keep improving themselves, their families, their hometown, their nation. ?

Citizens Association Honors Town’s Best; Elects Pamla Moore New President
•

The best of Georgetown was on display May 29 at Dumbarton House during the annual awards meeting and officers’ election of the Citizens Association of Georgetown. Its new president is Pamla Moore.

After departing president Jennifer Altemus welcomed the crowd, councilmember Jack Evans of Ward 2, who lives with his wife Michele and their children on P Street, presented Altemus with a proclamation from Mayor Vincent Gray, designating “May 29, 2013, as Jennifer Altemus Day.”

Evans, for his part, reminded the group that May 29 was the birthday of President John Kennedy, who lived in Georgetown in many houses through his years of public service in D.C. The presumptive mayoral candidate also launched into his “Georgetown’s Golden Age” stump speech which lauds the achievements of the neighborhood since the late 1990s and likewise touts the dynamism of D.C. as one of America’s leading cities, a true “boomtown,” cited by recent media reports.
Then, it was time for the awards during the briskly paced meeting.

The Captain Peter Belin Award was presented to Karen “Cookie” Cruse “for her expert and dedicated work in preserving the historic character of Georgetown.” Cruse said the prestigious award was “frosting on the cake” in her gratitude of the town.
The William A. Cochran Award was presented to Leslie Buhler, executive director of Tudor Place, for “exceptional efforts to protect and enhance the community’s parkland and architectural resources.” While living elsewhere, Buhler said she “loved Georgetown” best.

The Charles Atherton Award was presented to Dana Nerenberg, principal of Hyde Elementary School, for “exceptional service by a dedicated public-sector professional for outstanding work preserving and protecting historic Georgetown.” Nerenberg said that she had “the best job ever.”

The Martin-Davidson Award to the business persons who have contributed significantly to the community was presented to Clyde’s Restaurant Group’s Ginger and John Laytham. Noting Clyde’s longtime involvement in the community and its 50th anniversary in June, John Laytham said, “I hope Clyde’s is around for another 50 years.” Ginger Laytham also noted Clyde’s community efforts and thanked CAG for its leadership.

A special appreciation award was presented to Ray Danieli, now retired from Georgetown University, for his dedicated and distinguished service to the Georgetown community. Danieli said, “The city and the university now have a great relationship.”

Election of CAG officers and four directors also took place at the meeting. Here is the new line-up: Pamla Moore, president; Bob vom Eigen, vice president; Barbara Downs, secretary; Bob Laycock, treasurer; and directors: Diane Colasanto, Karen Cruse, Hazel Denton and Luca Pivato. Jennifer Altemus will remain on the board as immediate past president.

Upon her election as CAG president, Moore recalled that when asked to run she thought about it and then told the audience: “The reason I said yes was you.” ?

Jack Evans Report: It Was a Smart Call to Return Baseball to Washington, D.C.
•

I usually write about our baseball team around opening day every year, but I think the timing of opening day caused the budget to take precedence for me this year. April 1 was opening day for the Washington Nationals, and it was a great day to head outside and watch the Nationals win their opener over the Marlins.

Since the Nats started playing baseball at RFK stadium in April 2005, I have attended every opening game. Although I had never attended an opening game for any team before and had been to very few baseball games, I have come to look forward to baseball season. This year, there were obviously high expectations after our exciting playoff appearance last year, but it’s tough for any team to be successful with so many injuries. Still, I’ll take second in the division versus last place, for now, and I will hope we put some more wins together as the season progresses.

Little is heard these days about the decision to bring a baseball team to Washington and to build a new stadium. The stadium has worked out better than anticipated. The District borrowed $584 million to build the stadium and identified other sources of revenue to pay off the loan: 1) a 1-percent increase in the commercial utility tax; 2) a tax on businesses with gross receipts of more than $5 million; and 3) revenue generated from the stadium itself, including rent and sales tax on concessions, tickets and apparel.
Together, these taxes have raised millions of dollars more than necessary to pay the annual debt service obligations. All contingency funds have been fully funded, and I support using the excess revenue to pay off the bonds early. Our stadium financing method is used as a model by other jurisdictions.

Development around the stadium has occurred but has been slowed by the recession. Recently, with the credit markets becoming available, development is proceeding. I stated at the time that it would take ten years to build out the area. Keep in mind that it took that long to develop the area around the Verizon Center, a part of town which was much further along than the baseball stadium area.

So, as we settle into another baseball season, if you are a baseball fan, make sure to run over to a game after work or on a sunny weekend. Play ball! ?

Councilmembers Running for Mayor. What About Mayor Vincent Gray?
• May 23, 2013

Now there are two, with more expected to join in.

Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells officially announced that he was running for Mayor of the District of Columbia in the 2014 election, during the course of a rainy kickoff event last Saturday at the Starburst Plaza in Northeast Washington where heavily trafficked H Street, Maryland Avenue, Bladensburg and Benning Roads meet in a changing neighborhood.

The announcement came as no big surprise—Wells has hinted, almost made it official, criss-crossed his ward with listening and exploratory events and raised money—and now adds Wells to the official portion of the field which includes Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser, who announced in front of her childhood home a little earlier this year.

Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans—who ran unsuccessfully once before in a different time, a different political atmosphere and a different city—is expected to make his candidacy official in perhaps the next three weeks or less. Political chit chat has it that At-large Councilman David Catania might join in also. Talk has it that former City Administrator Robert Bobb may also join the fray.

The big question mark as of this writing is the status of Mayor Vincent Gray, who has a record to run on and a previous campaign to run against. The mayor’s low-profile work shows a city that has a big surplus, a declining crime rate, some improvements in schools, a booming economy fueled by new and very visible developments all over the city, and a changing demographic picture which has brought about visible changes in areas like those where Wells made his announcement.

Wells touted forging liveable, walkable neighborhoods, which has been a hallmark of the Capitol Hill area and beyond for his ward, but also of Ward 2 in the downtown area and in Southwest. He also focused on and emphasized ethical issues the city government has faced and continues to face with the cloud that still hangs over Gray’s mayoral campaign (and a so-called shadow campaign), which is still under federal investigation. No word from the U.S. Attorney’s office of late. No word from Gray either, who so far has been quiet about running again but has not ruled out the possibility.

It may seem early for folks like Wells and Bowser to make an official move, but deadlines are coming up, if not fast and furious, enough to see them on the horizon, including a filing deadline in September of this year and a D.C. primary election on April 1, 2014. That’s less than a year away.

The lull in the investigation, which is ongoing, puts a damper on Gray’s actions in the sense that the possibility of more revelations, even if they’re not materializing, create an atmosphere of ambiguity and political uncertainty, which is having a chilling effect on the political process when it comes to Gray.

Wells said he would focus on ethics in government, or what he called “a crisis in the Wilson building.” He said, “We’ve seen the greatest ethical crisis in our city since home rule.” That’s a little bit of hyperbole but not unexpected with the arrests of Ward 5 Councilman Harry Thomas Jr., and former Council Chairman Kwame Brown.

Other issues—race, which has been a noticeable factor in recent special council elections, transportation, (Metro efficiency and streestcars) schools,(closings and test scores), housing both affordable and less so, and gentrification—loom on the horizon for what promises to be a wide-open election campaign.

The Things That Truly Matter
•

It’s a good thing tornados don’t have names. Otherwise, we’d never get them out of our heads.

The folks in Moore, Okla., will have no trouble remembering the two-mile wide F-4 storm that blotted out the sun and for all intents and purposes destroyed their town like humans stepping on an ant hill.

The videos, photos and the sounds and stories from the people trying to find adequate words to describe what happened to them were indelible and overwhelming. For a time, and hopefully for some time to come, they will drown out the excitement-fueled chatter of the talking, tweeting, blogging and gossip and commentary classes about the scandal triads of the IRS, Benghazi, the Associated Press or the lottery winner or the engagement travails of Jennifer Aniston — to say nothing of Jodi Arias.

Mother Nature is a teacher, although her lessons, while obvious, are almost always frightening exercises in tough love, detachment and fury. For all intents and purposes, Moore no longer exists as a functioning, recognizable suburban town outside of Oklahoma City, an urban pocket in the flat landscape of Oklahoma where tornados touch down with devastating regularity. Storms like these and their tragic results undermine certainty, the kind found in the voices and statements spoken with such regularity in Washington, D.C., about just about everything. This is the worst scandal since … fill in the blank and not since … fill in the blank. I wonder if the senators and representatives from Oklahoma will have such rock-solid certainty in their voices when they will, as they must, visit the piles of wreckage that were homes, hospitals, schools and neighborhoods, will find such certainty trying to describe their reactions to the disaster that visited their state.

I know and remember this area. My son was born in Oklahoma City, and I went to school for two years at the University of Oklahoma just south of there in Norman. Writing about sports for the local newspaper, I logged a lot of mileage traveling with a semi-pro baseball player on the kinds of back roads and through towns where tornados are regular and feared visitors, places like Choctaw and Muskogee, towns with Native-American names. I suspect in times like these it doesn’t matter much what party they belong to — Democrats, Republicans or Tea or none of the previous. They belong to the party of the grieving, the shocked, the lost and hurt, the devastated, the party which doesn’t have an expert opinionated on “Meet the Press,” although the press will surely inundate their town armed with video and sympathy and air time.

I think perhaps politicians, elected officials, and the media and the policy nerds talk a little too much about things that nobody really talks about that much. Right about now, in terms of the United States government, Oklahomans will probably talk about the size of government, whether it is big enough, not only in resources but heart and determination, to keep the promises of speedy and enormous aid that are bound to be made.

All the rest is so much dribble and dross, looking small against the horribly transformed skyline of Moore, Okla

D.C. Nears Global-Class Status
• May 9, 2013

The times they are a changing, Bob Dylan used to sing. He didn’t know the half of it when it comes to Washington, D.C.

When was the last time you heard the word “global power”? Concerning the United States of America, for sure. But for the District of Columbia? Not so much.
But that’s one of the phrases that came up during the course of the Downtown Business Improvement District-sponsored State of Downtown Forum and Report, where listeners and participants, media and note-takers could look out a panoramic view of the city from the top of the Newseum that’s every bit as breath-taking as the one from offered by the top of the Pompidou Museum in Paris. We mention Paris because the French capital was one of the names mentioned by way of comparison, along with New York and London.

The forum panelists included Howard Riker, the managing director of Hines, the privately owned international real estate firm involved in many of the ongoing projects which are expected to make major impacts on the fast-changing downtown commercial, residential (as in condos) and cultural atmosphere ; Ginnie Cooper, chief librarian of the D.C. Public Library System, Gregory O’Dell, chief executive officer of Events, D.C., and Robert McCartney, the Washington Post columnist. Rich Bradley, president of the Downtown BID, moderated.

McCartney said that Washington was a world-class city, although not yet a “first-tier” city like Paris, London or New York. This could, of course, having something to do with size, even though the city is taking on new residents at an amazing rate, along with new developments, and projects, all changing the cityscape, especially downtown, which is practically unrecognizable from 20 years ago.

Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, who is said to be contemplating a mayoral run, reminded the audience just how much downtown had changed and why — the why being mainly three then politically controversial projects which turned to be game changers. “The Verizon Center, the Washington Convention Center and the Washington Nationals baseball stadium all passed the city council by one vote,” said Evans, who reminded us that he was a key supporter of all three projects along with Mayor Anthony Williams and Linda Cropp.”

Now, It’s hard to imagine the city without those three elements.

(For more details on the State of Downtown report, visit www.DowntownDC.org.)

Whatever Happened to Austerity?
•

What happened to “austerity”?

For the past few years, cutting spending was all the rage.

Now, except for the sequester, Congress shooting itself in the foot—which it didn’t expected to happen and is trying to dismantle—the notion of reduced federal spending has quieted to virtual silence.

The Republicans discovered a mistake in a spreadsheet that showed that its ideas of reduced spending–firing teachers and policemen and firemen–would somehow make the economy grow. Europe tried austerity. Some countries are entering their third recession in six years–only because unemployment dropping from 25 percent to 19 percent counted as a recovery–and are now in more trouble than before they tried budget cuts.

Here at home, we can’t cut. While the Defense Department tries reduce its budget, Congress passes legislation to manufacture weapons DOD doesn’t want. Congress doesn’t want to kill the jobs of defense contractors in their states and districts, even if DOD doesn’t need or want the weapons. Congress can’t even agree to stop giving away money to industries that no longer need it, such as farm subsidies, which cover very few people but a lot of geography and a lot of votes in the midsection of the nation.

Remember the complaint, “The Democratic Senate haven’t passed a budget in four years?” It finally did. Ho, hum.

The Congress Budget Act of 1974 passed during Watergate. Few paid attention to it. It required the President to present a budget in January and for the House and Senate to review it and pass a joint resolution by March directing the Appropriations Committees how to spend the nation’s money. That never happened.

Today, warring budgets stake out political positions and are bludgeons for attack the other party, and, of course, for getting votes. The budget itself has no teeth. It’s a road map, but like any road map, you don’t have to follow any particular route.

This year’s Republican House budget proposed the deficit to zero in ten years, mostly by shifting portions of health care costs to the states and by cutting almost $4 trillion from the safety net. Poor people don’t vote. One commentator questioned why all children should be entitled to a kindergarten. Kindergarteners don’t vote. The Republican budget didn’t touch Social Security or Medicare. Seniors vote.
The Democratic Senate budget didn’t touch Social Security or Medicare, cut defense (mostly by subtracting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), raised taxes, and ended up with a deficit almost half what it is today.

President Obama’s budget actually cut Social Security and Medicare, cut defense, raised taxes. He’s no longer worried about getting votes.

Social Security and Medicare are the pins that are going to prick the budget balloon. With 75 million baby boomers knocking at their gates, they are the largest and fastest growing parts of the budget, and they are on auto-pilot. Even though Obama tossed out an idea–any idea–both the House and Senate rejected the president’s budget immediately.

For years, the country has operated on “continuing resolutions.” In other words, because they can’t compromise, Congress votes to “keep doing what we’re doing.”

Don’t hold your breath. Federal budgets are not spending tools. They are political weapons. Since Congress knows little is going to change, it found one solution: just stop talking about it.

Is April the Cruelest Month?
• April 25, 2013

“All in all, it’s been a tough week,” President Barack Obama said in the wake of the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, which ended the week-long trial by terror of a proud, historic American city stunned into shock by the bombing attacks Monday at the finish line of its beloved annual Boston Marathon on Patriot Day. “But we’ve seen the character of America once more.”

Throughout the week, there was enough hard and difficult news to make many hearts buckle— flood waters in Mississippi, in the Midwest, in Missouri; the dramatic defeat of the background check amendment in the United States Senate, making the defeat of any sort of gun control legislation inevitable; poisoned letters sent to a U.S. Senator and the President by an Elvis impersonator; a huge fire and explosion that demolished the town of West, Texas and killed 19 people at last count, including firefighters.

In the end though, it was Boston where all attention flew, where our emotions were engaged most fully, where drama of the kind that had a 9/11 feeling to it unfolded for days from the moment of the seen-over-and-over-again explosion that knocked down a runner near the finishing line until the killing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the capture of his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar, two Chechen brothers and Boston residents who had perpetrated an act of terror by placing back- packs filled with deadly bombs in two different locations near the finish line of the marathon.

Three people were killed—an 8-year-old boy, a 23-year-old student from China and a 29-year- old restaurant manager. Their names were Martin Richard, Lu Lingzi and Krystle Campbell. Some 170 more were injured and hospitalized, some with injuries that required amputation.

The scenes at the scene—ambulances roaring in, people rushing to help, bodies flailing on the sidewalk, police with guns drawn, along with the accompanying sounds of sirens, screams, the yelling of officers, victims, bystanders, the energy that saw people running from and to the scene in confusion, seemed as familiar as any old dream of disaster, a particular disaster from a perfect fall morning nearly 12 years ago, when smoke, disaster and unimaginable horror and tragedy ruled New York.

Boston’s travail, the ruination of its proud day of celebration and of Patriot Day and all the frustration, confusion—one network anchor called it the fog of war—was in the end not 9/11 but 4/15 in the year 2013. It was something different, particular to the times, the place, and the people, including the perpetrators of the bombings, which hinted again at the unfamiliar culture of the others. Who and why could do such a thing, we all asked, and when we found out who, we still didn’t really know why, although it clearly carried a whiff of the cultural animus against America that permeated the horrors of 9/11.

It was not the same story—that needs to be clear. We caught the whiff of the terrorist bomb in the air, with random victims victimized again. But we live in age now that includes the wrath of Mother Nature and its Sandy, its earthquakes in Japan and Haiti, Katrina and New Orleans. We live now in the age of mass murderers and shooters, full of rage visited upon their own families, themselves, co-workers and bosses, but also most hurtfully to all, children and people in the wrong place at the wrong time. We live now in the age of terrorists, angry Jihadists, as well as homegrown killers.

The end result of such events is random death and destruction and loss, which can never be made up for with abstractions like blame, revenge, justice, rationale, ideology or psychosis. They are essentially senseless events which are utterly unfair in how and whom they victimize. The rest of us become spectators, left with a hunger to know what happened, to know and commemorate the lives of the victims, identify the causes and casuists, the time of day, the temperature of the air that hour, the life stories of both the perpetrators and their victims.

It is always different, with an overlay of the memories of previous tragedies. Boston was about innocent victims, about a historic city rocked to its knees, its people forced into a kind of lockdown in their homes while a huge law enforcement and military presence sought the two brothers. It was also about the city itself which other Americans hold dear for the origin history of our revolution which it contains on cobbled sidewalks, in stores and museums, for its Irish and ethnic overlays, its rough politics, its New England patina of intellectualism, poetry and education, its sports teams and rivalries.

It’s also about the media itself which went into its almost reflexive full court press, which is to rush to any and all bits of information and often report it unchecked, anchors, bloggers, freelancers, television and print reporters and gawkers mixing freely. In that sense, the usual happened—mistakes were made, the most egregious and unapologetic being that of the New York Post who ran a picture of a man on the front page of its tabloid, which suggested he was one of the men being sought. Hints of conspiracy flew through the air like bugs, including false reports of arrests.

When the bombers were finally identified— by way of an unprecedented appeal to digital and internet watchers to help find them in thousands of photos taken that day—it became a different story, a way of trying to figure out the torturous path that led these two brothers who had been in Boston since their early youth to the moment when they made these bombs and picked up and set down those backpacks. It was a complicated story, fueled by the anger of one of their uncles living in Maryland, who was furious at what he saws as a betrayal, by tentacles reaching to Russia and the Muslim republics, and the bloody battles of Chechnya. It ended with a cold-blooded killing of a Cambridge police officer, a running gun battle late Thursday night in which the older brother was killed and finally after a nerve-wracking day of lockdown and speculation, in the discovery of a bloody, wounded but still dangerous younger brother who had hidden for the better part of a day under the tarp of a boat in a yard in a house just outside of an established perimeter.

Politicians tried to butt in—it is in the nature of the beast—on what to do with the captured bomber and how to treat him. Questions remain, stories abounded. Boston—the citizens thereof— celebrated the end of their ordeal in ballparks and stadiums in the streets in cheers for police, fire- men and EMS personnel. They became “Boston Strong”, a slogan that was well on its way to copyright.
No one, of course, cheered in West, Texas, where firemen rushed bravely to their deaths, and not a single resident was left unaffected. But it was not Boston, no full court press here, perhaps understandably. Americans were left in grief, here, too, and reporters on television remembered to put the comma between West and Texas on the air, that pause, that identified the place. Soon, they too will be holding commemorations for those lost, and the unimaginable loss of life, and place.

West was not Boston and Boston, in the end was not 9/11 these years ago. It was the memory of 9/11 which touched Boston, if not West, a hint of smoke and fire and terror in the air. But it was April, a spring week, and the mornings came regularly after the Friday night.?