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Last Updated: 2001 July 11th! Want to jump to the most recent entry?

Welcome to Washington. You've always wanted to come here, and now here you are! Or maybe you're here.

SECTION 8 The Congress shall have Power .... (17)To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;

-And;

(18) To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

      - Constitution of the United States, Article I

Noted in Passing: Today, five new stations will open in SouthEast Washington and in Prince George's County Maryland on the MetroRail Green Line.

Moving right along:

Following the revelations over the last 18 months regarding the general dysfunction -- and occasionally the outright abusiveness -- of the District's social-services agencies, Mayor Anthony A. Williams has proposed a broad restructuring of the generic oversight agency, the DC Department of Health and Human Services.

Two new organizations would be created. One, the proposed Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services, would handle:

• Poverty disbursements
  Food Stamps
  Medicare eligibility
  Welfare

  Disability Management

  Physical Disability

  Mental Disability

  Protective Services

  Homelessness

  Adult protective services

The idea is to facilitate outreach, establish one-stop centers where a variety of sub-agencies can all reach the individual at the same time, and generally unite a variety of agencies all promoting poverty or disability outreach under one organizational aegis, more-or-less under one roof.

Another organization, the proposed Department of Child and Youth Services, would take over from the badly-battered Child Welfare agency once that agency exits the court-ordered Receivership. Also:

• Child Care and Parental Development
• Juvenile Delinquincy

The General Accounting Office, the investigatory arm of Congress, recently released a report on the Child Welfare Receivership, and their opinion was that the court-ordered receivership accomplished very little.

Moving right along: In 1995, the District's Department of Public Housing -- once rated the worst in the nation, was placed into receivership under the estimable David I. Gilmore who has since turned it into a model of public-housing revitalization. Aided by the incompetence of his predecessors, who had accumulated some $150 millions in unspent Federal funds, Gilmore plowed a great deal of innovation and these unspent funds into renovating he District's delapidated and dangerous housing stocks. Now that the Pubilc Housing agency has exited receivership and has been given stand-alone status not under the potential mismanagement of higher-ups in the notoriously incompetent District government heirarchies, it has entered into a loan agreement with the private Bank of America and the quasi-governmental Fannie Mae agency, with repayment of the loan leveraged against future Federal payments into the Public Housing agency's coffers.

Noted in passing, the DCFRA Control Board has authorized the sale of the historic Roosevelt Hotel. Built in the 1920s at 16th and "V" Streets NW, it was closed in the mid-1950s due to bad plumbing and opened again in the mid-1960s as the Roosevelt Hotel for Senior Citizens. It was bought by the District government in 1987, and was run as an apartment until the late 1990s when the tenants were relocated. The city used the building as collateral for a loan by the DCFRA Control Board to the Greater Southeast Community Hospital, which has since been bought out by a private consortium and remains open and serving the community. The Control Board has elected to sell the Roosevelt to one Georgio Furioso for some $10.1 millions. Furiosio says he will develop the Roosevelt into market-valued apartments, which will probably provide him with quite a nice income considering the proximity to fashionable Adams-Morgan and Dupont Circle.

Also Noted in Passing: the City will remain the owner of Kingman Island. Kingman is in the Anacostia River, and at present a bridge is being built to connect it to RFK Memorial Stadium and Anacostia Park. The City was at risk of losing it unless it was improved, and the City has kept its end of the bargain, more or less -- it's patrolled by the police, and pending determination of best-uses, the City has set aside $500,000 in the Parks budget for capital improvement.

Economically, the weeks since the Solstice -- interestingly, Christmas gave us a partial eclipse of Sol and two weeks later an eclipe of Luna -- have been locally marked by the downsizing of some fairly large players in the hightech sector. Cidera, Inc., and AOL -- which latter finally has merged with Time-Warner -- laid off employees, as have a variety of other firms. Worldcom MCI has also announced that it will lay off as many as one-third of its approximately 10,000 area workers, potentially bringing the total of recently unemployed in the region to nearly 7,000. Some concern is growing locally that those re-entering the market will face increasing competition from each other, as well as from less-expensive "H-1B Visa" technical employees brought in from abroad. Other hightech industries, notably Maryland's world-leading medtech research industry, continue to do well.

On the subject of health, in the District Schools, an outbreak of scarlet fever -- a variant streptococcal infection which can be very dangerous if not properly treated -- has parents in a state of alarm. Winter is a common season for the spread of such affliction in the region, as schoolchildren are forced to share the same air in school, and such afflictions are commonly contagious long before the symptoms are recognized.

Transportation issues remain well within the sights of administrators. The MetroRail Green Line was saturated by commuters -- some 30,000 new riders board the Green Line SouthEast every morning -- within two days of opening, and new rail cars are on order. The part of Prince George's County Maryland which now has MetroRail stations was historically far-underserved by public transportation and the public is taking major advantage, as the entire Region is massively traffic-congested. It is an interesting contrast and subject of evaluation of efficacy of public expenditures to note that the overnight addition of some 30,000 riders to a project 30 years in the doing has overloaded the already-congested system to the point of saturation, yet has done almost nothing to relieve traffic on the highly-travelled Capital Beltway Eastern Sector (I-95) though reportedly there has been a slight-but-noticable improvement on sections of the I-395 Southeast Freeway spur east of the Anacostia River.

Maryland Governor Parris Glendenning has, with the assistance of the Maryland State Legislature, embarked upon a policy of massive long-term social spending, largely to improve schools and to purchase land as an hedge against increasing Suburban Sprawl. Maryland is very highly urbanized and suburbanized, especially along the I-95 Corridor. So far as is known, despite the overwhelming disgust of voters from Prince George's and Montgomery Counties, Governor Glendenning remains steadfast in his opposition to any highway development along the grossly-underserved east-west axis. Local cynics regard his thrust towards locking up massive sums of money in long-term rebuilding and land-purchase as his way of guaranteeing that there cannot possibly be any funds remaining to develop any east-west routes and also to categorically forestall any State of Maryland development of a desperately-needed TransPotomac bridge aligned roughly between Rockville MD and Reston Virginia. Maryland would do much better spending a little less on land and a lot more on expanding its judicial system, as there are caseload backlogs which demand at least 30 new judges statewide, as well as associated staffers, and sheriff's deputies to serve the truly-ridiculous backlogs of bench warrants in Prince George's and Montgomery Counties.

The District

Noted in passing: the District's Chief Financial Officer, Natwar M. Ghandi, has appointed one N. Anthony Calhoun to the position of District Treasurer. Calhoun has the degree of a Master of Business Administration conferred by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His career has included years of city government experience, and he now comes most recently from seven years with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

Not quite in passing, it's still worth nothing that two years into his first term of office, Mayor Anthony A. Williams still needs to recruit Permanent Directors for five agencies. Strong reformers only need apply. Needed desperately are:

• Director of Parks and Recreation
• Director of Human Services
• Director of Contracting
• Director of Business Regulation
• Director of Public Works

Also noted in passing, the DC General Hospital has just closed the Pediatrics facility, citing among other things a massive desertion of nursing staff, which is departing prior to the impending probable closure or restructuring of DC General within a few days. The Region's other hospitals have been experiencing severe staff shortages -- to the point where one hospital was recently the site of a strike by the Nurses' Union over forced-overtime (among other things) -- and those hospitals are hiring DC General's nurses as fast as they can.

Also noted in passing, and with very mixed feelings, the DCFRA Control Board invalidated the District's law permitting collective barganing by physicians employed by Managed-Care/HMO-groups.

Law and disorder

The District is seeking more control over its own judicial system. Presently prosecutions are done by the US Attorney for the District, as the District is after all a creature of Congress. However, the DC Council believes that certain crimes are left unprosecuted by the US Attorney as being essentially uninteresting. Also, the District wishes to increase local accountability to voters, and the Council believes that a locally-elected judiciary would provide a check on the powers of the Mayor, notwithstanding that this would also provide a check on their own powers.

The US Attorney's office does have a fairly good record in terms of successful prosecutions of high-profile crimes. Unfortunately, they have had far too few major cases brought before them. This is the acknowledged fault of the Metropolitan Police Department. MPD Chief Charles H. Ramsey has been criticized widely over the slow pace of bringing sucessful reform to the District's ineffectual homicide investigations units. The rate of "closure" -- in the District, cases can be "closed administratively" when the force believes they have identified a perpetrator who is either dead, fled, or in prison on another conviction, and administrative closure does not mean criminal conviction -- is dismally low, with a wide variety of unsolved cases stretching back over a decade and numbering about 1500. Chief Ramsey's main complaint seems to be about a lack of high-quality investigators. While the rate of murders is down in Washington -- follo9wing major-crime trends nationwide -- the District's rate of homicides is far higher than in most other comparably-sized cities. Chief Ramsey also has assorted complaints regarding FoP Union interference in his attempts to emplace performance review criteria. Also problematic, the apparent lack of a positive-tracking system for files seems to be allowing various detectives to cover up their terrible success rates by simply eliminating the evidence -- the files -- which damn them for incompetence. It also has the unfortunate side effect of eliminating all records of evidence in the cases, or occasionally even records that the case ever existed. Keeping this in mind, the rate of unsolved murders in the District may be far higher even than known; at present it appears that there is not merely a problem with unsolved murders, but with unrecorded murders.

Homelessness, Hunger, Outreach

While on the subject of Death, over the last month or so, at least five homeless persons have died on the streets of the District, often within yards of facilities whose mission is outreach to the homeless. It seems they froze to death.

The District's Homelessness Outreach effort is largely focussed on Transitional Housing, and is to a fairly large degree entwined with various mental-health outreach systems and drug-treatment programs. Now, speaking as a formerly-homeless person who was once dependent for his survival mostly on the charity of strangers, I will speak out for the success of such programs in general. But there are elements of such coordinated programs which almost by-design tend to exclude certain classes of the homeless, specifically those who have "multiple diagnoses", or who are -- simply put -- "problem consumers". Some homeless persons combine mental-illness, a lack of employability skills, and substance-abuse problems. It seems that such persons -- I speak from experience -- quite commonly find that the larger the system, the more systematized and monolithically oppressive the experience of the system becomes. This is particularly true of homeless immigrants -- especially those from Central and South America -- whose histories include political oppression and guerilla warfare, and classical abuse of medical and especially psychiatric systems as tools of political oppression. It's equally true of US natives whose experiences -- whether actual or misperceived due to mental illness -- have been similarly marked, as I feel mine were, by structured and systematic abuse.

Transitional Housing programs are all well and good, and when concentrated upon those who are most tired of being mad and homeless addicts, and such programs are very effective at getting people off of the streets and into homes from which they may, healed or healing, emerge to become gainfully-employed taxpayers. Yet for many, all that will ever benefit them is a place to go when it's killing-cold outside, and the people who can find them to get them to come inside so long as they behave, or see that they're taken inside somewhere if they won't behave. This leaves those who refused to behave and who evade those who would have them taken inside to save their lives... there is very little that can be done for this latter group, outside of a more intrusive effort to find them -- which, in terms of convincing them to come in off of the street and live like the rest of us, is the exact approach guaranteed to offend and to fail.

Various remarks have been made from many quarters regarding "faith-based" outreach to the homeless, and from my own experience I can only say that it is absolutely essential that there should be no requirements of the beneficiaries to attend religious services nor to profess a conversion to, or renewal of, a particular -- or any -- faith. While I personally commend the impulse of Charity, whether it derives from one religion or another, this should in my opinion be purely a selfless act and to many of the homeless, too much preaching smacks not of selflessness and more of an sort of egotistical need to build a flock of followers. With respect, as a mentally-ill person seeking aid and often finding it at the last resort only at one-or-another Church, I often drew blood biting my tongue so as to not say, when invited to enter the congregation, that I was already diagnosed as delusional and had no intention of adding religion to the diagnosis. Many of the homeless aren't sufficiently honest or insightful so as to admit their mental illness, but it should be added that further confusing them with religious instruction -- as a condition of eating -- seems a little counterproductive. It has been remarked that such generally-beneficial cults as Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous can be successful only on the basis of the so-called "religious conversion syndrome", but I will submit that it might be much better to offer to help enroll the mentally-ill homeless in workfare-type programs which provide training, especially where that training will help develop logical and problem-solving skills. In closure, most of the problems facing many of the District's homeless will be best addressed by teaching them to think and to solve problems -- nobody can solve the problems of the homeless for them. As Jesus of Nazareth said, "the poor will be with us always". What we can do for them, realistically, is to keep them alive, and try to give them the mental and social tools required so that they may choose to successfully re-enter any of the variety of mainstreams of our society. If we cannot make them something other than poor, let us equip them to at-least earn the dignity of the working poor, and not force them to feign another's faith to earn their daily bread.

The District's Wards

Moving right along, the District -- which over the last two years has come under withering fire for decades of dereliction and more than a hundred deaths of its mentally-retarded wards -- has recently signed an agreement detailing its responsibilities and its means of fulfillment of those responsibilities. An independent review and oversight board -- backed by a $29 million fund -- is to dedicate itself to the protection of the Districts' mentally-retarded wards. $11 million will be used to create and staff the board, which will receive another $18 millions over the next decade.

Regarding the District's budgetary and financial outlook, I can only recommend that you buy and read Orphaned Capital by Carol O'Cleireacain.

Noted in Passing: Amid some concern that the District's fiscal recovery may be very much more a byproduct of a generally-good economy than of any sort of significant improvement in management or policy, we note that the City Council is considering whether or not to assess the entire city for property taxes each year, or remain with the present system of assessing only one-quarter of the city annually. We personally favor an annual assessment. It's not as if this would impose undue hardship, as the District's 96 cents per assessed worth of $100.00 is the lowest property tax in the region.

Also Noted in Passing: The DCFRA Control Board has certified the District as having complerted four years of balanced budgets, and will be officially disempowered as a control authoriy on 2001 September 30. It will continue to exist as a research and review organization for an unspecificed time thereafter.

DC Schools Superintendent Paul L. Vance is being criticized somewhat over his slow roll towards eventual personnel changes in the District Schools. Personnel changes are clearly in order. Recently, DC School Board luminary Peggy Cafritz Cooper announced that as many as half of the District's schoolteachers were "weak"; she later amended this remark to include only highschool teachers: "...about half of our highschool teachers are not really the masters of the content they teach". Superintendent Vance was reluctant to directly affirm this, but he did note:

You have what we would call in other schools systems B- and C-tier teachers. When you've got a C-tier teacher, they are teachers who could not get jobs anywhere else, so they hired them here.

Vance is in the middle of developing a procurements system which he hopes to be a model of success. If he can do this, he will be reknowned as a miracle-worker: the present system is categorized as among the most broken in the nation, particularly damning due to the very high per-capita expenditures. As to evaluations of teachers, for some departments that will have to wait; Vance notes the difficulty of evaluating chemistry teachers when there is no lab equipment suitable for class experiments. Vance proposes also that rather than the present system of principals evaluating performance of teachers, system-wide specialists in the particular academic disciplines should be doing the performance evaluations. Further, Vance has stated that in the future as slots become vacant, he will leave them vacant rather than hire anything other than "A-tier" teachers.

Specifically, Vance hopes to hire new teachers from professions other than teaching. For instance, a good practicing engineer would probably take a massive cut in pay to become a teacher with the District Schools, but the students would then be instructed by someone with a powerful working knowledge of mathematics, physics and general science. Similarly, business is best taught by successful business-people, ideally fresh from "the Street". A program is being developed and expanded from similar programs, which should increase the number of experienced professionals from outside the teaching profession who would take some time off from their present careers to bring a little excellence back to the District Schools.

Noted in Passing: the City Council is investigating deficiencies in the administration, documentation, and timely application of Federal Grants by several District agencies. Recently, reports surfaced regarding extreme deficiencies in handling of such grants, to the point where significant budgetary impacts would occur when the grants were rescinded due to a failure to comply with documentation and disbursement requirements. As always, we hasten to note that someone must always keep on top of the District Government's employees tendency to let "free money" pile up in out-of-the-way places, lest it mysteriously wind up, as in the Barry-Cronies(tm) Administration, getting spent for things it oughtn't.

The Washington Post reported, on 2001 March 2, that a drug raid serving a warrant in NW Washington, based on a tip, had discovered -- among other things, a decaying human skull. Apparently the decaying human skull was accompanied by a dead cat (no description was given, but we may safely assume that it was black) and assorted ritualistic trappings. Furthermore, the skull evidently had a note attached to it or stuffed inside it, said note bearing the name of a DC Superior Court judge, prompting authorities to warn the judge that someone was "trying to put a hex on him". Read all about it. According to DC Assistant Police Chief Ronald C. Monroe:

We're treating it as a legitimate threat... We believe the judge may have rendered some kind of ruling that they didn't particularly like.

Further, and from the Post article of 2001 March 4 (Neely Tucker and Martin Weil):

Police, according to Monroe, are exploring the possibility that the ritual performed in the home was Santaria, an Afro-Cuban faith that uses animals for sacrifices. Santeria, once largely unknown in the metropolitan area, venerates saints and incorporates a belief in divination, spirit possession and the sacrifice of animals to appease the gods.

The raided home, a two-story row house, is in the 3000 block of 13th Street NW. A resident of the neighborhood said he visited its dark basement about a year ago and saw all the trappings of a ritual, including a seating area surrounding an altar on which there were several candles and bizarre pictures. He said he often saw people slip in the front door and head straight for the basement.

D.C. police Inspector Hilton Burton, of the Major Narcotics Strike Force, which executed a search warrant on the home, said a dead cat was found next to the altar. It was unclear if the cat was killed or if it was used in any ceremony, he said. The neighborhood resident, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said the landlord's cat has been missing for about a month.

Burton said a tipster told police that [John] Sterling, 46, manufactured and stored drugs, including crack and powder cocaine. The tipster also told police that Sterling lived in the 13th Street NW row house, according to the arrest warrant.

The District -- Health and Humanity

It is in exactly this sort of highly-logical and causality-driven social environment that a great drama now plays out.

Not to mock people of faith (I myself an an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church, as well as a notorious Deist with "eclectic neo-pagan" leanings), but there are some things which one might take on faith, yet which would seem, according to remotely-scientific principles of experimental validation, to be highly unlikely, or even rather ridiculous, once one has given the matter the least bit of consideration based upon thinking rather than feeling. Such would appear to be the position of a group of clergy -- over 200 in all -- who protested the imminent closing of the moribund DC General Hospital.

These fine people were of the opinion that "DC General is the only beacon of hope for the critical-care patients who face hard times with nowhere else to turn", in the words of the Reverend A. Michael Black of the Bethesda Church. As things have been, this was sadly true. However, that was the 20th Century and this is the 21st Century. In the 20th Century, it was seen as okay to take the ailing indigents and toss them into a charity ward where they could die in peace, and the rich and insured wouldn't have to sully their eminent selves by being ill in the presence of the poor. However, in the 21st Century, we believe that it is essential that the rich and the poor die together; we live in a shrinking world and the methods that make one man rich may send other men eventually to their dooms. It is only fitting, for example, that a man dying of cancer caused by environmental pollution, should be in the same room at the same hospital as someone whose stock dividends are paid on the products that caused the pollution that's killing the roommate. The stockholder will be directly faced with the real dividends of those stocks, and the man dying of cancer will have his chance to sear the soul of someone whose money cannot forever keep Death from the door; he may say directly to someone who cannot leave: "see me and see me now, one of how many sent to their graves by your investment in callousness, cost-cutting and the politics of greed." I think that would be fitting indeed, but it shall not happen that way so long as there is a convenient place such as DC General into which the poor may be crammed so they can die out of the sight of the people who left them no place to live but the poisoned lands east of the Anacostia. The 21st Century public healthcare system envisioned for the District will give the indigent and the poor publicly-funded access to a wide variety of doctors all across the District, they will not be restricted to only those doctors who can practice their trade only at the poverty clinics.

Now, having said their piece, and their piece having said that they do not understand that the goal is radical improvement of delivery of healthcare to the District's poor and indigent, two nights after these fine clergy plead their case at the Trinidad Baptist Church, at the Union Temple Baptist Church -- possibly the most influential church in District politics -- the Revered Willie F. "if we were angry at [the Korean shopkeepers], we would have kicked their heads up and down the block like a soccer ball" Wilson blasted Mayor Anthony A. Williams, nearly inciting a riot, and such mainstream speakers as could be fielded by the New Black Panthers held forth that closing DC General was "an act of genocide that embodies slaveholder and Nazi values", to the cheering of the crowd. Fortunately, the Rev. Wilson did give what was by all accounts a very good benediction which probably kept the near-riot from getting very ugly. The point was reiterated by a number of highly-respected black professionals that the things -- outside of violence -- that kill black people in Washington are the things that are much better taken care of before you're in the hospital. Expanded primary-care is exactly the place to identify and treat the major killers of Washington's black population, mostly high-bloodpressure related disease such as stroke, heart-failure, and cancerous conditions. By the time you're in the hospital for that sort of thing, there's not much hope and it's expensive as hell. But the City of Washington is trying to offer free health-care that should prevent most of the people who wind up in hospitals from winding up there. What exactly is it, we wonder, that these well-meaning clergy are trying to retain, when they resist the closure of the hospital, so that the city can afford to provide proactive and preventative healthcare for the poor and uninsured?

There are some questions surrounding the successful bidders on the contract to take over the hospitalization and trauma-unit aspects of DC&nsp;General when it closes. The "Doctors' Community Healthcare Corp" ("DCHC"), many of which appear to be centered around the fact that for a healthcare corporation, it doesn't appear to be greedy and entirely profit-motivated. In a variety of acquisitions of ailing facilities nationwide, is hasn't turned much of a profit, but it is credited with stemming losses at the facilities where it has taken over operations, and the general level of efficiency and organization at those facilities is reportedly much-improved.

Less clear is what the City of Washington will be doing to assure that the poor and indigent will have sufficient access to the private care providers around town, and furthermore, plans to take over the school-clinics operations formerly run by the soon-to-be-closed Public Benefits Corp ("PBC") have not yet been pubilcized in other than vague general terms. We must keep in mind that a healthy child is more likely to become a healthy adult than is a sickly child.

Moving right along, Mayor Anthony A. Williams recently gave his second State of the District Address. Please read it! Among other things, the Mayor notes:

We've met almost 70 percent of our Scorecard goals, and how does it show? There are some 700 more blocks of city streets repaved, 700 more young people with year-round jobs and training, 1,200 more people who can get drug treatment, 1,700 more high school seniors who can now afford a college education anywhere in the country because they're paying in-state tuition, 2,400 homes that have been built or restored - more than half of them East of the River, 3,500 more children who have access to quality child care, 6,000 new trees, 8,000 seniors who received a million meals, and 17,000 more adults and children with health insurance.

And also moving right back -- here's what the Mayor has to say on the healthcare initiative:

So, tonight, I'm pleased to announce that as part of the health care network we're creating, we will immediately provide HMO-style coverage to our city's uninsured. And in my budget, I'm making a $1 million guarantee to residents without insurance - you will get the prescription drugs you need.

But this crisis goes beyond insurance. As the Health Commission made clear, we must create a health care system rooted in primary and preventive care, so that people have a family doctor who treats them with dignity and helps them solve health care problems before they require emergency care. At my town hall meeting last night at Union Temple, there was a doctor who asked, "Are we teaching our children that the best they can expect is a trauma center when they are shot?"

Now, I know that some still have great concerns about what we've proposed - and I heard from many people last night who have a lot of fear - and, quite frankly, even some anger. They know the current system is broken, but they fear the unknown even more. And I understand that. I respect that. I know how hard uncertainty is -- especially when it comes to our families' health. But I wouldn't be standing up here supporting this plan unless I truly believed it was the best way to improve health care for our residents.

Ladies and gentlemen: we are not closing a hospital. We are opening the doors of care to the people who need it most. We're keeping our current clinics and adding 100 health care centers to the network. We're providing access to 1,000 more doctors and nurses. We're providing 24-hour trauma 1 care at Greater Southeast. And we're working with local health care providers, people who know the District, know its residents, know what it means to meet our needs East of the River.

Noted in passing, the District of Columbia now has an Online Sex Offender Registry.

WEIRDCON is at 6.

The District

The main story in the District is, as expected, the imminent closure of the DC General Hospital, and Healthcare for the poor and indigent.

Predictably, everyone with some investment in DC General has got an axe to grind, and in typical DC fashion, they don't ever directly address the issue. For example, it's no easy thing to come forward and say that if DC General Hospital closes, you won't be able to assure your pharmaceutical-abuser clientele of an uninterrupted supply of contraband. Nor would it be easy to come forward and state that if you don't have a base-camp in the middle of the city, and a steady stream of indigent malcontents, you can't continue to expand your powerbase with your relentless racism. Instead, people will get on another issue and stick to it like a pit-bull on a 12-year-old's leg, and no matter how wrong they are, that's their story and they're sticking to it. But in truth, about half of the complaints about the closing of DC General amount to people harping about how "the way things are" will be something different from what they're used to, and the people bitching the loudest are the ones who are realizing that they're going to have to work for a living instead of doing deals "as always". Please make no mistake, this is no insult directed at the fine medical staff of the facility, the best people are getting good jobs elsewhere and it will be seen after time that this was the best thing for everyone.

But there are some questions which persist legitimately even once you disregard the 9-out-of-10 objections which are just people griping about time moving on. Foremost, once the Public Benefits Corp ("PBC", the quasi-governmental organization which ran DC General for the City, along with school clinics and a few neighborhood clinics) is no longer running things, there will no longer be the collection of treatment and outcome statistics, and this will be a problem. It was clear that the PBC was not providing the level of care that the people should be getting, but this was evident mostly based on the obvious incompetence in administration of cost and billing issues. There were actually fairly decent records of patients complaints, treatments, and outcomes. Under the new system, there will need to be a high level of accountability. The District, having committed to the privatization of healthcare for the indigent and poor, must create a system whereby the Health Department can see if the tax dollar is being better spent than it was under the old system.

Also somewhat unclear at present is exactly how the new system will gather-in those who had gotten their services at DC General. We propose that the City should request: that those who believe that they qualify for Medicaide or other public healthcare assistance should fill out a streamlined application. Copies of this application would circulate to all relevant agencies. The application should include information about not only where the client resides, but where they work or generally look for work. Applications would be sorted on this information, and physicians participating in the program would be assigned patients, initially at random but centered on location. A secondary sort would tend to align the specialty of practice with the patients' histories. Once this is done, every applicant should have a quick general physical exam with attention paid to any immediate illness. General health information handouts should be available. Also, all existing records which can be processed in lieu of such applications should be processed so as to enroll as many patients as possible in the program so that funding can be pre-emptively earmarked for the patients, rather than making applications after service is rendered.

After this initial system-intake process, follow-up appointments should be made. This will cause a massive scramble in the District's healthcare industry, but once the scramble is done, almost everyone who will ever need to use the system will know who their doctor is, where to find him, and when they will have an appointment for general preventative care. We also hope that there will be neighborhood consortia which will organize with doctors' groups to schedule rotating clinics which could deal with minor-care issues such as minor injuries and illnesses. Trauma patients will of course be served at the appropriate facility.

The District's Health Department should be made the primary contact for enrollment into whatever assistive programs exist, and they should also be the primary collector and maintainer of records. The task of actual collation of reports from the data should be outsourced to organizations which are unconnected to any of the service providers or the Health Department.

In the meantime, in order to satisfy Federal and other laws, we believe that all of the PBC's workers should be given their required 60-days notice, with a proviso that there may be some work for them beyond that period. We also request that the Health Department begin collecting records which might be converted to applications for assistive programs and also we request forwarding of these applications to the appropriate agencies. We further request that there be liasons established between the DC Health Department and any Federal agencies which would administer or fund the assistive programs. The idea here is to make things as painless as possible, and the way to do that is to get working on it now.

Noted in passing: The District is reportedly nearing a settlement with one T. Conrad Monts, who had rehabilitated the District's historic John A. Wilson building, the once and future City Hall. This is going to cost the District about $15 millions, but it will get the use of the whole building and the developer won't lose his shirt as a result of his rehabilitation efforts.

Moving right along: a shortfall in hiring in the Metropolitan Police Department has combined with the departure of about one officer per day, to burden the MPD with a rather startling rise in overtime paid out. Some 12 officers reportedly made between $75,000 and $142,000 last year, in overtime alone. Hiring efforts reportedly proceed apace.

Also moving right along, wealthy philanthropist Betty Brown Casey has offered a gift to the District amounting to $100 millions. Some $50 millions would go towards replacing or restoring the District's once-famous Urban Forest. The "City of Trees" has seen a rather astounding decrease in arborage over the last decade or so, with about a 60-percent loss of arborage since the late 1970s. This is due partly to long-term neglect and partly due to the recent condiions of drought and near-drought. Everyone wants to see the city full of healthy trees. But it's the other $50 millions that have the city practically up in arms. That donation would come in the form of a Mayoral Mansion, a huge estate in pricey Foxhall. If you wanted to find a nice more upscale and crime-and-trouble-free neighborhood in the District, you simply couldn't. But that is the problem as many see it; the wealthy are by-far the vast minority of Washington DC and the poor and their advocates greatly fear that such a mayoral residence would insulate the Mayor from the realities of the District, which are in fact grim and gritty. We have to admit that it's long overdue that the Mayor should have a residence that comes with the office, but we also believe that the position should come with a "Sword of Damocles" to keep the officeholder reminded that this isn't a cushy plush job, in fact the job requires a committment and devotion to the majority of the voters, rather than provides an opportunity to hobnob with the fabulously-well-to-do and the politically powerful.

Increasingly, as both new development and densification urbanization move westward, we hear a rising clamor in support of the proposed Rockville-to-Reston (Virginia) TechWay, which would bridge the Potomac, offering a crow's flight commute between the major industrial, trading and research centers of the region, rather than the present commute which follows and extended horse-shoe route. Estimates of over 100,000 daily commuters have been disputed by assorted groups whose political philosophies range from "not in my backyard (NIMBY)" to "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything (BANANA)". But the appeal of this bridge is so great that George Mason University gives an actual course on studying the project, its impacts, and its benefits. So far, the general consensus is that this bridge is needed, this bridge is necessary, and with all due diligence and utilization of the best environmentalist impact-amelioration and remediation techniques, this bridge will be built.

Elsewhere, it has become apparent that with increasing densification, and the development and increasing prominence of new Edge Cities such as Howard County's Columbia, and the tri-county former (non-Baltimore) laughingstock of Maryland -- Laurel, where I work -- Maryland can no longer pretend that there won't ever be an InterCounty Connector, and the Maryland Department of Transportation is going ahead with longstanding plans to improve Maryland Route 28, which is being extended from Layhill Road towards the intersection of Spencerville Road (Maryland Route 198) and New Hampshire Avenue Extended (Maryland Route 650).

The District

Law, Order and Governance

Noted with regret, Wilma A. Lewis, 45, the first black female US Attorney, has submitted her resignation from the office for the District. Lewis, a hard-charging and aggressive prosecutor, is moving on to private practice. The US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the appointing President. Lewis took over the office after the departure of Eric H. Holder Jr, who became the US Deputy Attorney-General. Lewis was primarily known for her "community policing" approach, which fit right in with the methods of the subsequently-hired Metropolitan Police Department Chief Charles H. Ramsey. Lewis is also remembered for her targeting of the much-feared "crews", DC's own version of "gangstas". No replacement has yet been formally nominated.

Also departing, Mayor Anthony A. Williams' longtime aide and confidant, Abdusalam Omer. Formerly Deputy-Chief Financial Officer, chief budgetary officer, and most-recently the Mayor's Chief of Staff. Generally considered to be a fine financial administrator, Omer has been characterized as out of his depth in the District's political arena. Yet some suggest that Omer, as much if not moreso than Anthony Williams, is highly responsible for the District's surprising restoration of fiscal order and general internal housecleaning. His contributions will be remembered with increasing respect as time brings to light more of the details of this masterpiece of financial reorganization and bookkeeping prowess.

Noted in Passing: Acting-Director of the Parks Department, Neil O. Albert, has been named to the position of Director. He's stated that he intends to keep the Parks in good order. Failure to do so was one of the primary reasons for the departure of his predecessor in the position.

Metropolitan Police Department ("MPD") Chief Charles A. Ramsey is not a happy man. Recently, The Washington Post managed to get its hands on the transcripts of a years'-worth of e-mail sent from police-car to police-car. According to the Post article on the matter, a very significant number of officers are on record as either allowing an awful lot of unknown users access to their e-mail accounts -- a likely story -- or as sending an awful lot of vulgar, racist, and sexist/homophobic intervehicle text data traffic. Sociologically, this e-mail database is a treasure-trove documenting the generally-insular police culture. It's also, in this particular instance, raising a lot of questions about racial profiling, and the specifics of the cultural attributes of the District police. In particular, the question had long-since surfaced regarding the MPD's longstanding status as one of the few major police departments not requiring a college degree; some would allege that it is very difficult indeed to graduate from any college without learning to at-least keep racism and sexisms to one's self -- but it can also be contrarily argued that college inevitably promotes the exact sort of elitist fascism and class/cultural patronism that is utterly intolerable in a cop, particularly intolerable in a city where the vast majority are lucky to graduate highschool. (Noted in Passing, the District has rejected an application by the elite Georgetown University to expand its enrollment, citing the persistent and astounding misbehavior of their student bodies, and the city also ordered the University to take steps to curb the antics of the fascist rich-kid brats.) Chief Ramsey has said that he will be deeply investigating the possibilities of racial-profiling by officers and investigators, and he will not tolerate any further displays of racist/sexist attitude from his officers, and he has backing on this position from all levels of City government.

Moving right along, we note with some interest that the residents of many of the District's public housing complexes for the Elderly have requested assistance from the city, to combat drug sales. The common areas of the complexes will be checked by drug-sniffing dogs.

Health, Housing, Welfare

Noted in Passing: the number of Tuberculosis cases in the Distrct is up by over 20 percent, and in Northern Virginia, up by 5 percent. Poverty is one major factor cited, as is the evasion of medical processing and quarantine by illegal aliens, who are increasingly choosing the District and environs as their destination for colonization within the US. No data has been made available regarding what percentage of these TB cases are the dreaded antibiotic-resistant TB, although it may be presumed that in the case of illegal aliens, TB should be regarded as antibiotic-resistant until proven otherwise by successful quarantine and treatment.

In the ending days of the former Barry-Cronies(tm) Administration, as the city sank into a pit of fiscal despair and hopelessness began to settle in as the power company started turning off the street lights and traffic signals, one of the first acts of the newly empowered Chief Financial Officer -- Anthony A. Williams -- was to "fire a lot of deadwood filling chairs in patronage jobs". One of the most politically-endearing aspects of former Mayor Marion Barry was his patronage system, in which he rewarded his supporters with city jobs, some of which apparently required only attendance as a condition of retention. Williams drew a great deal of praise for this action, and it may have been this action which was the single greatest inspiration of the impulse to draft him as a candidate for the Mayoral race.

Welfare "as we know it" will be ending within about 12 months. As the District has always had a dispropotionate load of people on Welfare, it has a disproportionately large problem to solve, that of moving people off of the Welfare rolls and into productive employment capable of providing for the necessities of life. As the Federal program is phased out, such funds as are available towards Welfare are delivered to the States and Territories as block grants, to be administered as the recipient admistrations see fit.

Recently, the District's approach to employing the unemployable is to hire the people coming off of Welfare. Since 1997, some 6000 persons have left the Welfare rolls, with about 16,300 remaining.

The District is also taking a rather more liberal approach than are some other jurisdictions. For instance, the District will be allowing some assistance to continue even after the earned-income levels rise above the official poverty-level. Also, as so many of the jobs available to present and former Welfare recipients are in the suburbs, or are otherwise no easily accessible with public transportation, the District will exclude the value of automobiles when determining eligibility for cash assistance and foodstamps. We are rather uncertain as to the specifics of the rules and do pray that there will be sufficient safeguards so as to prevent abuses. We note also that the District is making it easier on both frauds and the honest recipients, by requiring less-frequent reporting of wages. It should be noted that the District will be visiting the homes of all recipients to ensure that they've been notified of the search-for-work requirements of the program.

The District is hiring persons off of Welfare at minimum wage, for up to 25 hours weekly, and also providing 15 hours weekly of remedial education or other work-related activities.

The issue has been raised before, and I will raise it yet-again, that it might be an excellent investment for the District to consider establishing some form of city-run subsidized daycare. Possibly the greatest obstacle to moving from Welfare to Work is that of childcare. Some five years ago, the Washington Post ran an excellent series of articles which pointed out that less than half of the District's licensed daycare facilities could pass inspection, often running in unsafe structures with unqualified personnel. It occurs to us that we should point out for about the tenth time that the first thing the District should do is to hire Welfare recipients and train them for the express purpose of taking care of the children of women who desperately need someone to properly care for their children so that they can go out looking for work.

And with that pronouncement made, we are moving right along to Child Welfare in the District of Columbia.

Child Welfare

It's been over a year since the tragic murder of little Brianna Blackmon brought public attention to the utter brokenness of the District's Child Welfare system. A house divided into two functional divisions scattered across several agencies, the system is not even capable of reliably reporting the number of its charges, much less capable of providing timely details as to intake, status, or disposition of cases. The information systems are considered "completely unreliable" and personnel turnover is exceptionally high.

On Capitol Hill, they've finally had enough of it. Various Senate and House leaders evidently feel that it is an intolerable shame that in the Capital of the free world, hundreds of abuse cases go uninvestigated, and the murders of infants appear to be almost commonplace.

Sweeping reforms have been proposed, including creation of a new Family Division which would tend to eliminate the division of scopes -- Child Abuse, and Family Services, which latter comprises foster-care, adoption and most non-abuse cases -- which presently is the major bottleneck in legal processing. The Family Division has been proposed as either a subdivision of the Superior Court, or else as a freestanding authority; probably the latter would be the best. Also, there are some questions regarding the availability of services for children to which the court might remand its charges. It might be useful to create a new organization from the top down, with sideways linkages to the Department of Heath and the District Schools, as well as to the new Department of Mental Health. Further, it might perhaps be useful to establish linkages with any daycare systems supported by the City in furtherance of abetting transitions from Welfare to Work.

DC General Hospital

We note with much chagrin that DC General Hospital remains an unresolved issue. We also wonder how exactly it is being funded. Illegal payments from the City under the table once again? Probably. However, the proposed handoff of indigent healthcare provisioning to private organizations is just not happening yet. The proposed plans reportedly fall far short of providing the amount of coverage necessary. The DCFRA Control Board has reportedly tentatively approved the general contract tendered by Greater SouthEast Community Hospital, which would develop a major Trauma Center and generally pick up on non-emergency healthcare provisioning. Apparently, though, the DCFRA is not sufficiently satisfied with the subcontracts.

We will try to keep you informed as to the general issues and outcomes of process, but as of now -- having stated finally that it is time to replace DC General Hospital's position as a walk-in clinic with advanced distributed preventative care outreach -- we are getting out of hospital politics since there are just too many crazy people getting all bent out of shape over this issue.

This having been said, we are moving right along to Mental Health.

Mental Health in the District

WEIRDCON has declined to about 5: once again, it's Tourist Season. Things are still way weird in the suburbs, but that's mostly generic white-trash weirdness and immigrant weirdness, as opposed to Psychotic Democrats and Religious Spycho Weirdness, which had been extremely high until about a week or so ago. Beware, this could be the calm before the storm.

Mental Healthcare in the District has been terrible in recent years. The homeless-and-insane have been left to rot in the streets, probably more of an issue about homelessness than of insanity. Yet, for the chronic cases requiring constant hospitalization, life has been an unrelenting mild hell of bad management, therapy consisting of injections and television, and profiteering under a court-ordered receivership which has proven to have the precise opposite effects of what was intended.

Emergency Legislation passed by the DC City Council has created a Department of Mental Health. Martha B. Knisley, 52, will be spearheading the creation of the new system. The new system will have the power to monitor, certify, license and coordinate Medicaid as well as other funding, and will pursue a policy of public outreach. The Commission on Mental Health will be deconstructed.

According to one Nancy Lee Head, of the DC Mental Health Consumers' League (as quoted by the Post):

Today is a landmark day for mental health consumers... We are inaugurating a ercovery-based, consumer-driven system for the first time.

This will be a major change for the mental-healthcare consumers of the District. Probably about 5 percent of District adults and a slightly-larger percentage of juveniles could be consumers, but at present, just over one percent of the city's residents are being served, and that service has been extremely spotty, to the point where alarms were issued regarding the increasing misuse of the city jail as the primary mental-healthcare provider.

Predictably, a spokesperson for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill ("NAMI") -- a misnamed organization which advocates forced injections and electroconvulsive therapy, "involuntary outpatient committment" and even psychosurgery for acute schizophrenia -- declared misgivings. The present Receiver for the Commission on Mental Health is now separating the direct-care functions of the organization from the oversight functions. NAMI is guaranteed to object to any system which prefers non-intrusive community care over approaches which tend to herd the mentally-ill into institutional settings which can be controlled by NAMI and their supporters.

Knisley is presently a senior consultant with Technical Assistance Collaborative Inc., and was formerly a State Commissioner on the mental-health boards of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Revitalization

While the District's general prosperity is on the mend, the trends of the last decades can have their courses changed only over the course of time. To try anything else is much akin to trying to stop a barrelling freight-train by parking a truck full of pig-iron across the tracks; the best thing that can happen is that the truck and its load will be hurled out of the way but it's really more likely that you'll simply have a train-wreck cascading a path of destruction on down the path.

Yet although the train of the District's trends has come around some curves in a pretty wobbly mode, the worst is clearly past, although what was once seen as good may soon come to be seen as too much of a good thing.

This is particularly the caase with regard to Housing in the District. Even as the population declined to the east of 16th Street NW -- primarily due to middle-class and working-class black families moving out -- the populations have grown somewhat in such areas as NorthWest Washington. One of the reasons for the recent concentration in NorthWest is the massive rebuilding of entire blocks, with extremely pricey new or entirely-rebuilt homes being snapped up almost from the groundbreaking ceremonies. These homes are not cheap and in fact their very priciness may be one of their main attractions to the buyers who can be relatively sure that their neighbors will also be wealthy and not "troublesome indigents".

Affordable housing is now at last coming into the sights and considerations of the District's administration. While the District is definitely benefitting from the high property taxes on these pricey new developments -- revisions in the City Tax Code have caused tax assessments in some parts of town to jump by nearly 50 percent -- it is becoming nearly impossible for the working class to afford housing anywhere in the District, yet another reason for the abandonment of certain quarters of the City of Washington DC. The Mayor wishes to have the District be representative of all of the classes in the Nation, and this is laudable. Therefor, he and members of the City Council are seeking to develop programs which will increase the stock of affordable and moderate-prices new or refurbished housing. Also a matter of concern is the pathetic dearth of sufficient affordable housing which has been modified to enable access for the physically disabled.

Much of the affordable housing in the District was secured by a holdover from the Territorial days; DC as a Territory still has the Homesteading Act in force. Many have taken advantage of acquiring a property and making it conform to code, and by doing the required five-years of living on the property. Now, however, the District is investigating some 18,000 properties which may be abandoned, or which are absentee-owned, allowing the owner to claim a rather small tax-deduction which they are not rightfully owed if they are non-resident.

Meanwhile, the City's plans to promote new development on the site now occupied by the Brentwood Vehicle Impound Lot (and adjacent properties) is being complicated by what has been characterized as "an appalling lack of planning" for the relocation of the City's faciliies and operations. Reportedly, the City has until 2001 April 24 to get its stuff of of the property, and so far as we know, there has been no effort to get a relocation underway, due to a lack of an effort to get a relocation destination.

Secondly, the weather has been very nice, and rather than wade through nearly 50 issues of The Washington Post, I decided to counteract post-employment depression by getting out into the sunshine. I like sunshine; it's warm, it's comforting, and evil things don't like it. But one must balance one's own need for healing with one's duties to the readership, whether one's goal is modern popularity or the information of posterity. Hence my reluctant return to this page; yet there are things that must be said, and it would appear that I alone am both able and inclined to say what must be known.

The Region

Springtime has returned in full flower and the hills are graced with a verdance resulting from a fortnight of temperate nights and light mists. Yet as time marched on into May, it was seen that the dryness of recent years is with us yet again. The Parks service notes that the stream flow in the mighty Potomac River is slowing much more rapidly than they would expect or would hope, and this is a harbinger of a dry summer. We concur. We pagans have a feeling for such things, and I predict drought which might be relieved only by catastrophic precipitation events. Take your pick.

Water, and the Potomac, remain bones of contention between Maryland and Virginia. Virginia intends to withdraw more water from the Potomac and has nearly completed preliminary work for the new canal. The site is questionably placed, of course, as it lies exactly on the site of the best place for the Virginia-side footing of the proposed Rockville-to-Reston "TechWay". Virginia and Maryland are at last negotiating on the issue of a TransPotomac Crossing northwest of the District, forced by recent reports indicating that the Washington Metro Region remains in the top four most-congested regions, nationally. Despite an hysterical opposition in Montgomery County Maryland -- which opposition is led by the filthy rich through whose neighborhood the best route runs -- it appears that the Region as a whole is very well-aware of the need for this bridge. The opposition is, predictably, calling the proposed route "the TruckWay", and attempting to fan opposition with claims of increased noise and pollution. As to the noise, existing county law already requires that heavy trucking must travel along the existing highways that would be uprgaded to form the backbone of the TechWay, if it is laid following the route we've laid out. As to the pollution, there will be a lot less of it if truckers have a seven-mile straight shot from Rockville to Dulles Airport, rather than being forced to idle through -- and massively contribute to -- sixty or more miles of the nation's fourth-worst traffic, travelling along existing routes between the two points. This bridge will be built. The opposition's best argument against building the bridge is a much better argument in favor of building it. During the recent economic boom, Virginia had many more jobs than workers, and Maryland had many more workers than jobs. Half of Maryland workers surveyed who stated that they turned down appropriate employment in Virginia cited "the commute" as their primary reason for turning down the jobs.

Maryland has finally embarked on several roads projects in the region, mostly along Maryland Route 28. An extension of Route 28 from Layhill Road eastward to the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue extended (MD Route 650) and the Spencerville Road (MD Route 198) is proceeding apace. Other planned improvements include various grade-separated crossings for traffic remediation, at such major bottlenecks as US Route 29 at MD Route 198 in Burtonsville, several such crossings along Georgia Avenue extended (MD Route 97 north of Silver Spring MD), and other crossings along US Route 29, a major arterial between the District, Columbia MD, and points southwest of Baltimore MD. Other improvements include a widening of MD Route 28 west of Rockville, where it is a major chokepoint for commuters, as well as in-county improvements in Montgomery which should widen and straighten some roads which are increasingly deadly under the pressure of the hectic commute.

The Census figures for the region (and nation) are out. We note that almost all Greater Washington Metropolitan Regional ("GWMR") population growth is due to immigration. We also note that in an extremely unusual pattern which we have been noting for the last several years -- which was dismissed as lies, propaganda, or alarmism -- has been officially logged by the US Census. Rather than settling in the city centers as is the pattern nationally, the extremely large numbers of immigrants settling in the suburbs and outlying edge cities, with about 8 times as many settling in to surround the District than settled in the District proper. Note that nationally, the population growth in the last decade was the greatest ever, with all growth -- exceeding by about 15 percent the post-WWII "Baby Boom" -- due entirely to immigration. Note that nationally, the Census Bureau states that the "hispanic" population increased by fifty percent, with the vast majority residing in the US SouthWest. In the Washington DC area, by far the largest "hispanic" population are Salvadoran in origin, with entire villages having been transplanted to the US, mostly split between Los Angeles and the suburbs of the District, and a major ongoing internal migration of Salvadoran-origin persons from Los Angeles to the environs of the District is known to be underway. It must be noted that not all immigrants to the area are Salvadoran -- although they comprise a great percentage. Here is a breakdown of the nationalities represented. Unfortunately, no reliable figures are available indicating immigration legal status.

The Brookings Institute, generally considered quite even-handed and in fact generally leaning toward increased levels of immigration, has a very informative report available.

The District

Moving right along into a more-cheerful subject, the District itself is moving right along.

DC General Hospital

First and foremost -- mostly because I want to get it out of the way, over and done with -- DC General Hospital will be shutting down most of its operations on or about 2001 June 25. Trauma and inpatient care will be shifted, primarily to Greater SouthEast Community Hospital, which was recently rescued from bankruptcy and returned to robust operational health and near-profitiability by the Doctors' Community Healthcare Corp" ("DCHC"), a consortium of physicians based in Arizona. Regarding the "Public Benefits Corp" ("PBC"), a quasi-governmental entity operated by the District to provide healthcare options to the District's poor, DCFRA Control Board Alice Rivlin had this to say when the Control Board decided to go ahead and transfer operations and responsibilities from DC General to Greater SouthEast:

Hope for a cooperative solution has now vanished... It would be impossible to build a comprehensive, high-quality healthcare initiative with the existing deteriorating, mismanaged, and highcost DC General Hospital and the deficit-ridden PBC as its anchor.

Of course she's right. I've been saying so all along, and as we all know, "klaatu is always right... you just might not know it yet. klaatu... knows stuff." klaatu also is widely known for having never given bad advice, and if there is one thing for which he is known besides that, it is his selfless dedication to the Revitalization of the District with an unswerving emphasis on improvement of services to the working-poor and indigent of the District, the vast majority of whom would cheerfully backstab him given half a chance. klaatu has this unerring ability to seriously enrage those whose power stems exclusively from corruption and nepotism, primarily due to his tendency to shine a light on those things that can flourish only in Darkness. klaatu strongly advises those who will listen to do as klaatu suggests -- because klaatu has your best interests at heart, primarily because they are also his own. for this reason, klaatu has spent most of his time since 1995 raising hell on the InterNet, with no income and no public recognition, and since we oppose nepotism, cronyism, and "the way it's always been done in Washington", klaatu would have it no other way.

The District of Columbia will take care of the working-poor and indigent residents as follows:

• Children's Hospital, the nationally-reknowned facility, will assume management of the District's School Nurse Program.
• Emergency Care will be directed to the nearest hospital capable of providing the required care, although children will be directed to Children's Hospital if feasable in terms of the emergency response.
• "Unity Health Care", which had operated a dozen clinics for the Homeless, will manage the new program. They are expert at making scarce funding go a long way. We believe they will continue to do this. District residents (residency will be checked!), including even illegal aliens, should report to Greater Southeast Community Hospital for enrollment in the program, or to any of the six remaining PBC clinics.
• Patients treated at PBC facilities within the last two years will be automatically enrolled in the new system.
• Medicaid and employer-provided insurance eligibility will be determined and assistance with applications will be provided. Any applicable insurance coverage from whatever source will be fully accessed in order to reduce misattribution of billable and collectible accounts which were improperly attributed as "uninsured" under the old system.
• Contractors external to the District government will be retained to assure oversight and effectiveness of the new system.
• To qualify for free healthcare, District residents must have no health insurance, must have incomes less than two times the Federal Poverty Level. Unqualified patients will receive coverage for 30 days while qualifications are determined.
• Sliding-scale low-cost health coverage will be available for the "working poor" who cannot afford their own insurance, but who exceed the limits for free coverage.
• Those who already have a primary-care provider of low-cost or no-cost medical services may remain with that organization, but will now have coverage of access to specialists.

We highly commend those who are working so hard to establish this new system.

District of Construction

In recent years, much of the District's increased prosperity has resulted from an increased emphasis on collection of taxes, as well as a massive reorganization of the tax collection system. The District government has mailed out some 11,866 notices of tax delinquency to property owners, amounting to some $54 millions owed. On July 14 these properties will be advertised for sale and will be sold at auction by the District if the back taxes have not been paid.

The Washington Post has just run an excellent two-part series on the massive renaissance of the construction industry downtown. I do hope that they will archive it online and leave it as a free reference. There are two articles:

East End Building for a Comeback, by Debbi Wiloren, and Upscale Dreams, by Jackie Spinner, detailing the hopes for an affluent downtown where people live, work and play.

The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority, or "Metro", says that it will be necessary to add at least one new subway rail line through downtown to accomodate the ridership expected by 2015. Recently, MetroRail completed and opened the final leg of the "original plan Metro", and the new rail segment was jam-packed from the moment it opened. There are community groups seeking even more extension of the MetroRail system, including an "around-the-Beltway" Purple Line.

In SouthEast Washington -- near the St-Elizabeth's Hospital for the Insane -- one of the largest undeveloped parcels of land remaining in the District will soon feel the bite of construction equipment. Camp Simms, formerly the home of elements of the DC National Guard, was sold to the Congress Heights Redevelopment corp for the extremely nominal price of $500,000 for 25 acres of land. A supermarket -- probably a Giant Foods., Inc store -- and 80 single-family detached homes would be built on the site. Congress Heights Redevelopment will spend some $28 millions of its own money to build the homes and supermarket. The homes would be priced from about $165,000 to $200,000. The supermarket would be the first in Ward 8 since the 1998 closure of the Safeway on Milwaukee Place. The supermarket segment of the development would include spaces for minority-owned businesses, and part of the proceeds of the completed development would go to job training or after-school programs.

Evil in the District

I'm not generally given to discussing things in terms of "good versus evil" but I will make an exception.

Recently, a man, brought before DC Superior Court Judge Tim Murphy for the heinous crime of drinking in public, collapsed before the bench. As he begged for medical attention, gasping that he needed air, he was mocked and scorned, and even told "[W]ell, if you'd quit yelling, maybe you chould get some air." After ten minutes of insisting on his need for air, the US Marshals removed the man, one Robert Waters, to a cell where he died of heart failure.

Predictably, this being not a wealthy person and this occurring in the District, nobody seems to care much. The general attitude about this incident was, acording to one witness, that it was all "a big joke". Waters was a frequent visitor before the District's courts, generally on smalltime charges such as disorderly-conduct or other charges common to the homeless.

Moving right along, as the homeless do, we'd like to note that the District is tossing out some $160,000 already spent on the conversion of an 1862 firehouse to the purpose of being a downtown shelter for homeless women. The facility would have had at least 50 beds for "transitional homeless", which means that 50 women would have had a place to stay while they got healthy and got work and got on the track to having their own housing. It seems that the facility would have been surrounded by some 765 luxury apartments, part of Mayor Anthony A. Williams's vision for a residential community in the East End of Downtown. Please see the Washington Post articles cited above. There are plans to relocate the shelter -- presently providing 90 beds in several trailers downtown -- but so far no location has been disclosed. It will have to be fairly close to downtown, because that's where the people are who will need it.

But Downtown is not the only place where outreach for the homeless is needed, nor is it the place most in need of such outreach. The greatest need is in SouthEast DC, across the murky Anacostia River. Some $20 millions annually are administered by the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness. Yet since 1994, it has not conducted any comprehensive studies of where its resources should be best applied. SouthEast has been effectively abandoned, with extremely minimal outreach. Hopefully, with the transfer of most medical services from DC General Hospital to Greater SouthEast Community Hospital, there will be some increased access to healthcare by the homeless of the District's SouthEast side -- but the prognosis remains grim for access to shelter or food by the homeless on that side of town.

But some things, no matter the passage of time or the change of situations, simply do not, cannot, change. What alienates me from Washington and causes me to rapidly lose interest are such things as this loathsome attitude that many people have in this Region: that Washington is Washington and that, simply put, they don't give a damn about the rest of the country, nor the people in it, nor their problems, or needs, nor hopes nor dreams. You're just tourists to many Washingtonians, and they see you as despicable, the governed, useless hicks and they're glad to take your tax and tourist dollar but aside from that you're just scum to them and they see no real need for ethics nor morals in their dealings with you. So ingrained is this attitude of a combined overt politeness and relentless hostility of strategy and tactics, that I once was driven mad enough to simply write them off as a pack of bloodsucking vampires, since that would tend to explain the attitude. But with all due respect, that comparison would be insulting the vampires. Dracula will tell you straight out when he vants to zuck your blood. The Washingtonians I so despise will simply devour your soul with no warnings and smile as they do it. I don't know what to call them, so I leave you with a riddle: what's white, and people, but aren't white people? Welcome to Washington! -they are all around you... and actions speak louder than words.

All national pride aside, I really wonder in recent days if it would not have been better to let the District and its Denizens (many will never be citizens, many being incapable of the moral requirements of citizenship) sink back into the swamps, to have the Federal government move to some other city and ensure that the local camp-following whatever-they-ares didn't follow. But that would not be fair to the Real People in the District, who do have the moral qualifications for citizenship, and who work under great hardships and with minimal resources, to better their fellowman and fellowoman. These tireless workers for the cause of Righteousness and Justice deserve every bit of assistance they can get. In the face of such cheerful evil as permeates the Greater Washington Metropolitan Region, the decent people have an uphill battle. All I can try to do, I suppose, is pray for a level playing field, in a city that isn't sinking into the swamps and sucking the region down with it to perdition. And with the aid of a great concerned many, this last has been done.

So for a while at least, this site will remain and I'll try to keep those who need to know reasonably well-apprised of the situation here. Yes, I'm still waiting in the gates of the city, for the Angels to come to Sodom.

But don't count on this site, or me, being anywhere near Washington anytime after August.

The Region

Summer is approaching. In recent weeks, a cool dry late spring has given way to a clammy summer mugginess, with the drenching rains that for now stave off worries of a repeat of the last few years' drought.

Economically, the non-infotech sector remains fairly strong. However, a looming construction bust is foreseen in such places as Loudon County Virginia, which had embarked willy-nilly on acquisitions of land and the laying of foundations for hightech industry office-parks, which seems to have been a bit wishful and certainly premature. With the shakeout in the infotech industry, we can only wonder who will be left holding the bag for the now-empty data-center complexes and the office parks that probably will not be built until the next big boom, which if history's cycles are a guide, will be between a decade and a quarter-century from now.

Aside from having the congestion problems ranked in the top four regions in the Nation, the region also has the country's seventh-worst air-quality, particularly to the east of the District, in Anne Arundel County Maryland.

A recent survey by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government found some 12850 homeless in one day, slightly more than a quarter of them children. Almost half were found in the suburbs. I personally believe that the homeless were greatly undercounted by this survey.

The District

First though not foremost, the Potomac Electric Power Company ("PEPCO") has announted a 3.5-year project to replace all of the underground wiring in tony Georgetown. Recently, Georgetown has been plagued by a variety of manhole explosions generally believed to be of electrical origin. the District's Department of Public Works would like to expand upon this project, taking advantage of the general groundbreaking to replace all of the underground systems in Georgetown, including city water, stormwater, sewage and phoneline routes.

Moving right along --

The District's overhaul of financial management is failing, according to the US Government Accounting Office ("GAO"). Get a PDF copy of the report GAO-01-489. From the summary of the report [italics mine]:

GAO found that although the District is in its fourth year of implementing its new financial management system, essential elements of the system are not yet operational. Two components of SOAR have not been fully implemented: the budget module is on hold, and the fixed assets module is incomplete. The implementation of the systems that feed into SOAR -- personnel and payroll, procurement, and tax -- is incomplete and the systems lack electronic interfaces with SOAR. Because the financial management system is incomplete, much of the District's financial management and budget information is produced through cumbersome, manual processes and the extraordinary efforts of a few key staff. District officials need to take time to assess the current status of the city's financial system, to identify problems, and to establish a disciplined process to address these problems through the completion of its financial systems implementation.

Further, the District government has extremely weak controls on data security and data privacy in most of its information systems. Get a PDF copy of that report.

The SOAR system as implimented by the District is generally criticized as being an extremely powerful and complex system which is generally beyond the capabilities of most District government employees, with little or no training in its use being given to most employees. Mayor Anthony A Williams was quick to defend SOAR by saying that he was raising the level of professionalism and accountability by implimenting the SOAR system and by assigning actual accountants to interact with it. One useful byproduct of the complexity of the SOAR system is the District's ongoing effort at redesigning and simplifying the City's entire accounting and accountability structure, consolidating a bewildering array of agency accounts, procurement and management channels, and employee pay-grades and job description categories.

Noted in passing, a recent audit by KPMG states that the University of the District of Columbia ("UDC") has mismanaged tens of millions of dollars originating with students as well as the Federal and District governments. UDC's finances are not managed by the University, but rather by the District.

Also noted in passing, the District Schools intend to order as many as 30,000 students to attend summer school, almost half of the roughly 67,000 students in the system.

The District Department of Employment Services is promoting tax-credits for businesses which hire persons presently receiving government assistance. Please see this large animated presentation which will help you contact liasons to access your tax-credits by employing District residents receiving public assistance-- everyone benefits.

Noted in passing, the Department of Employment Services has leased two floors of the renovated Peoples Drugstore warehouse at one of the centers of the city's Revitalization, at New York and Florida Avenues NE. Their old office facility, at Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, will be demolished and replaced with the Freedom Forum's "Newseum", a museum of informational-media history and progress.

Also noted in passing, the immense DC Convention Center (version 2, presently under construction) suffered wind damage and a portion of the structure collapsed. Improper installation of a truss and a lack of bracing left a part of the roof structure vulnerable to wind damage. Two engineering firms believe that the basic design is fundamentally sound and that had directions been followed, the damage would not have occurred. Nobody was injured in the collapse which occurred during the night. Construction continues on the immense structure which replaces six city blocks north of Mount Vernon Square.

Appointments and Other Personnel Changes

In:

• Leslie A Hotaling, Director of Public Works
• Benjamin F Wilson, Board of Elections and Ethics for his fourth term
• Geoffrey H Griffin, Board of Zoning Adjustment
• James H Hannahan, Zoning Commission
• Joan Logue-Kinder, Director of Communications
• Olivia A Golden, Director of Child and Family Services, as of June 15 assuming control as the agency is released from receivership.

Out:

• Judge Tim Murphy, retiring after the flap over an indigent man who collapsed from asthma in his courtroom and died shortly afterwards, which witnesses described as being treated as "a big joke".
• Milton J Bailey, Director of the Department of Housing and Community Development. Departing his administrative post due to frustration at the time involved in getting anything done, Bailey says he'd like to work elsewhere in the community development field in the District. In the position only nine months, Bailey says he's a producer and not an administrator, and he wants to be more involved with getting affordable housing in place, rather than overseeing the very slow processes of reforming a District agency.

DC General Hospital

On May 1, City officials took over control of the DC General Hospital. One of the first things they discovered was that a layoff of some 500 employees which was announced in January never actually took place. Even more deficits thus have accrued to the city's treasuries because of the quasi-governmental "Public Benefits Corp ("PBC") which managed the DC General Hospital and the School Nurse Program as well several clinics around town.

Starting 2001 May 16, no new patients were admitted to Pediatrics or Obstetrics.

We note in passing that members of the DC Council had launched a lawsuit seeking disclosure of assorted documents associated with the closure of DC General Hospital and transfer of most low-income public healthcare operations to Doctors Community Healthcare Corp and Greater Southeast Community Hospital. Councilmen Kevin P Chavous (Ward 7) and David A Catania (At-large) claim that since ambulances have increasingly been directed away from DC General Hospital, other hospital emergency rooms have become overburdened. Representatives of the DCFRA "Control Board" stated that the transition was going smoothly and that public healthcare was not at risk and that low-income residents are not being denied access to medical care. A final hearing on whether a lawsuit should go forward blocking the closure of DC General Hospital and transferring operations to the contractors is due on 2001 June 8.

Noted in passing, and off of the topic and the subject of personal gloom, we note that residents of the District seem highly opposed to the creation of a purely-advisory board which would provide Congressional assistance in furthering the Revitalization of the District of Columbia and the blossoming of good government in a continued DC Home Rule.

DC Health and Humanity

The District of Columbia Child and Family Service agency soon will be no longer under Federal receivership.

Judge Thomas P Hogan signed documents which will return the ultimate control of the heinously dysfunctional agency to the ultimate authority of Mayor Anthony A Williams as of 2001 June 15. By 2001 October 1 it is expected that the present division of labor and consequent confusion -- between the police handling abuse reports and the investigation of neglect by Child and Family -- will have been eliminated by the consolidation of efforts to one agency. Monitoring will continue until 2001 December under the watchful eyes of Judith Meltzer of the Center for the Study of Social Policy, as well as Marcia Robinson Lowry of Children's Rights, Inc.

First, I would like to note that the "Greater Washington Metro WebSpace Search Engine" now has a clone-sister, running on a rather faster machine with a more-reliable and much faster connection. Yes, it does die rather frequently, unlike the very-reliable earthops.org site -- but it also can now scan its target sites with blistering DSL speeds, and between the site-scan runs which often cause it to crash, it's fairly steady. Try to make some use of this resource, it searches some 80-plus DC regional websites, most of the official DC Government sites included, and it searches these sites at least once a week.

Also please note that such updates as are made to this page will be made to three different servers, as redundancy is a good thing. Please welcome Media.EarthOps.Net to our family of servers, joining the hopefully reliable and fast WWW.EarthOps.Net and the old standby, sluggish-but-dependable EarthOps.Org.

The Region

Regionally, the main concerns are the relentless slowdown in the technology sector. There are a lot of unemployed information-technology workers. While the Federal and Government job sectors are generally hiring -- and are particularly hiring in the information-technology area -- they are not hiring the unemployed IT workers recently downsized, primarily because the majority of these IT workers are simply uninterested in working for the Feds, nor for the corporate bottom-feeders who cater to the Feds. The general consensus seems to be that it's just not logical to compete to get paid $30,000 a year to wear a suit to work so you can piss in a bottle twice a week.

Another concern in the region is the recent disappearance of intern Chandra Levy. It seems that Ms Levy -- reportedly involved with Modesto California congressman Gary Condit -- walked out of her apartment just south of Dupont Circle, sometime on 2001 May 1, with only her keys. The rest of her belongings were neatly packed in her apartment, according to the media. Nobody's talking who knows where she actually went. Is it just another case of someone who walked down to the liquor store to cash a check and got taken off by some mysterious stranger? Or is it yet-another case of Beltway Insiders putting the wraps on a potential Presidential candidate's potential embarassment? Maybe it's just another case of an intern chewed up, but not spit out, by the notorious Capital Hill "bimbo mill". Anyway you look at it, "mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be interns".

Also of concern in the region is the appalling rate at which Prince George's County Maryland's police officers have been using deadly force. Please see this excellent series, "Blue Wall of Silence", from The Washington Post.

The Chesapeake Bay, the Region's centerpiece, remains in relatively good health, but more effort is necessary. The Bay Grasses are returning, but nowhere near as fully nor quickly as has been hoped -- and also, the Blue Crab populations remain in decline. It may prove necessary to impose a partial or full moratorium on crabbing in the Chesapeake until the populations rebound. Bay Grass coverage and Blue Crab populations are believed to be linked. Another factor may be the major population rebound of the Chesapeake's sporting fish, many of which appear to feast largely upon the smaller stages of the Blue Crab lifecycle.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority ("WMATA") has stated that it will need to spend about $150 millions over the next six years if it is to keep up with anticipated ridership growth. At least 300 new busses -- additional to the roughly 325 new busses needed to replace the aging current fleet, for which funding is in hand -- will be needed, along with at least one new parking garage.

The District

First, we want to make clear to all that we are not abandoning the District because we think it's a terrible place. The District of Columbia has a great deal to recommend it. It is also the inevitable target and point of rendezvous for a great many parties of questionable goals and means, and, as many places as the District has to recommend it, it has as many venues which are the gathering places of those who do not mean well. Unfortunately, as a rule, this is the only sort of place that will let me in. Why bother.

When the District was in dire need, I felt it incumbent upon me to agitate for changes which I believed would lead to a stronger Washington, and thus to a stronger Nation. Many of those changes have taken place, or are in the pipeline. When such as myself feel a need to become involved in the public life, rest assured, historical forces were like the cat at the door, outside, toothy, and not going away unfed. But there is more than one way to skin a cat, and I have taken my approach and others have taken their own approaches to cleaning up the District. The District, for all its special considerations, remains a city, and one of moderate size, centrally situated within a modern Megalopolis comprising the District and substantial parts of two States. There will always be crime in the District, and there will also always be good people as well as the bad -- but the District is no longer a festering sore attracting only the forces of corruption and decay. With no Dark Cloud hanging over it at present, that excellent disinfectant called Sunshine will tend to root out the evils which had hoped to batten upon the Nation by attaching themselves to the wound on the neck of America which was the District of Columbia in the late Twentieth Century. Is the District, is the Nation, out of the woods yet? Not by a long shot -- but a new day has dawned and we believe our services are no longer required as a guide through Darkness. It would appear that the District has seen the Light. Though patches of shadow yet remain, we will mostly recuse ourselves from making reports or offering suggestions, unless (of course) it appears to us that rather than finding its way into the Light, the District is again stumbling into the Darkness towards the embrace of the unholy with which it so happily danced along the edge, through most of living memory.

Soon, the DCFRA Control Board will disband, leaving the District to its own devices in pursuit of its own goals. What shall history record? Time will tell. I won't have much to say, probably, other than perhaps to occasionally point to this or that bit of interesting trivia, and hopefully to no egregious failures or violations on the parts of officials and politicians.

And now, on with the show.

District Government

The DC Medical Examiner's Office (City Morgue) has recently become an independent agency, in the hopes of streamlining the hiring and procurements processes. Backlogs in procurement and funding have left the ME's Office with a caseload dating back to 1999. This is -- believe it or not -- quite an improvement on the state of affairs throughout most of the 1990s. Throughout the late 1980s and the 1990s, the quality of service at the ME's Office had declined along with funding, and assorted interesting developments with respect to personnel in the early 1990s combined with decreasing funding to reduce the ME's Office to the position of being literally the national laughingstock in the profession. One Dr Jonathan Arden was finally positioned as the Chief Medical Examiner after a nationwide search. An expert in child forensic pathology, in the last three years Dr Arden has brought a lot of focus to the plight of the District's battered children. He's also managed to staff the ME's Office -- and not incidentally clean up the pools of gore in which hundreds of bodies lay slowly decaying in inadequate refrigeration under the former mismanagement -- but the ME's Office hasn't yet managed to fully modernize, nor to eliminate the backlog. Among other things, the ME's Office is waiting on completion of their own toxicology lab, essential in any city but especially so in an international hotbed of intrigue and espionage. Plans to consolidate with the Metropolitan Police Department's Crimes Scenes unit -- for the creation of a large and modern joint forensics lab -- remain at least five years from fruition.

It may not matter much. The Metropolitan Police Department ("MPD") -- according to a group of retired detectives and police administrators who Chief Charles H. Ramsey formed into a "homicide review team" -- is failing badly in increasing the success rate of Homicide investigations. While the force itself is now far-better equipped than they were at the beginning of the Crisis back in 1995, the rates of "closure" -- "closure" in DC means that the cops are pretty sure they think they know who did it -- remain about the same. The Homicide Review Team's report indicates some premature closures, cases not fully investigated due to failure to contact witnesses, collect or properly store evidence or keep records sufficiently so as to be able to convict. In particular, the "chain of custody" had been insufficiently documented, which is almost guaranteed to cause problems during prosecution. Among the records missing, additionally, were such essentials as crime scene reports, and autopsy reports.

Bad record-keeping has been one of the persistent problems within the MPD. In some cases, the initial reporting was not of the highest quality, but in some instance there has been a general failure to properly file the records, and in other cases, the records were apparently properly filed and logged, but subsequently disappeared without being logged out. Statistics are not available regarding which -- or how many -- cases have been lost in court due to missing records or log-files. It's certain that future prosecutions are in jeopardy due to the ease with which defense attorneys can see a case dismissed simply with pro-forma requests for records and logs which, under the present mess, likely could not be produced.

There are also the records that were never kept, or which were once kept, but which now have no assigned compilation clerks. for instance, the Post reported on 2001 June 10 that the MPD has not kept comprehensive files on missing-persons cases since roughly 1995. For instance, in the present case of infamy, the missing Chandra Levy, the obvious approach is to compare the facts of the present case with cases of the past, to see if there are obvious similarities. Yet, there are no records with to make the comparison. Only the National Crime Information Center has any general statistics, and their statistics might be misleading as they only collect statistics on the opening of such cases, and not on the resolution. The Post investigation found some 558 cases for this year alone with some 160 of them missing juveniles. Of these reported cases for this year, the FBI databases report 443 as not-yet-found -- but this may be due to a failure to fill out and submit the proper forms notifying the FBI that the individuals have been located. Or, there may be 443 people missing from the District who will never be heard from again. This is the crux of the problem: there simply isn't any way to actually know.

Moving Right Along:

Parts of Georgetown in NorthWest spent several days last month with no electricity, due to yet-another subterranean utility-tunnel fire and consequent manhole-explosion. Plans are being developed to coordinate a massive replacement or upgrade of almost all of the utilities in Georgetown, one of the oldest parts of the city. Presently tony and upscale, Georgetown has had an interesting history. Once the original Port in the region, pre-dating the District by many years, Georgetown later became one of the majority-black and working-class neighborhoods until shortly after the Second World War. Since that time, it has become increasingly populated by the wealthy, and sought-after as a location for businesses, especially upscale shops and specialty merchants. It's also a major tourist attraction, and these outages in the middle of tourist-season have had a major impact on Georgetown businesses.

The District's Water and Sewer Authority has proposed a $1 billion upgrade to the city's sewers, including miles of new tunnels and creation of reservoirs to impound waste and runoff until it can be treated. At present, almost everytime it rains on the District, overflow gates discharge effluent directly into the local streams and rivers. Recently, a woman who had acidentally plunged into a rain-swollen Rock Creek during a flash-flood later died, apparently due to exposure to fecal coliform bacteria during her brief swim. Unlike many cities, or the surrounding Maryland Counties, the District doesn't have a storm-water system completely seperated from sewer conduits. About a third of the District's stormwater and sewage systems are combined.

DC General Hospital is closed. Non-emergency patients are being seen by local private-practice doctors. We will endeavor to track developments as they occur. A 38-member "Health Services Reform Commission" has been appointed by Mayor Anthony A. Williams, which will track health-care delivery to the Indigent who formerly tended to be served at DC General Hospital.

The District and contiguous counties are being mobbed by Central Americans as a result of a Federal decision to extend "Temporary Protected Status" to refugees from "Hurricane Mitch", and also as a result of a major lobbying effort by the government of El Salvador, which is heavily dependent on remittances from generally-illegal "refugees" from their civil war which ended 10 years ago. Somewhere near 250,000 work permits are being offered to illegal aliens from Central America who want to work in, or near, the US National Capital.

The rental "boom" appears to have ended in Nortern Virginia. In the District, it's still difficult to acquire a rental property for a reasonable rate, but this probably will not last. Home-ownership rates are rising in the District. According to the Census reports, nearly 3/4ths of the rise in ownership is due to purchases by minorities.

About 9000 people in the District are going to lose the tax-breaks they'd been getting under the District's popular "Homesteading" program. Due to the District being essentially a US Territory, the same Homesteading Act rules apply which once enabled frontier settlers to lay claim to a property by building a house on a property and living there for five years, after which they would have clear title. In the District, those who live in property they own automatically get $288 off of their tax bills, and pay taxes at only 75-to-83 percent of the tax on properties where the owners do not reside. It turns out that some 12,000 housholds were taking the tax breaks, but never filed the proper paperwork. Another 16,000 households possibly qualify for the tax-breaks but their paperwork isn't fully in order. The District might make from $10 to $20 millions from taxing fully as allowed by law.

The popular "Home Lottery" program is being overhauled. For $250.00, lottery winners would become owners of abandoned, tax-defaulted, or problem properties. Part of the deal was that these properties would be renovated bvy a certain time, brought up to City Code and occupancy standards. But the vast majority of lottery winners have failed to live up to their end of the bargain. The District is proposing that entire blocks of adandoned housing be renovated by private contractors, and afterwards be made available to lottery contestants who would pay the cost of the renovation, still far less than they would have to pay to buy a livable house from a resident. The objective of the city is to repair problem properties and get people living in houses that they own.

Wayne B. Upshaw, the third Budget Director under the administration of Mayor Anthony A. Williams, has decided to resign his post. In the interim, his duties will fall to Gordon McDonald, the Deputy Budget Director. Upshaw was technically on loan from the Federal Office of Management and Budget. Among other things, he cites a desire to spend more time with his new child, and to pursue other professional opportunities. Generally considered by all to be very competent in his job, he also apparently developed a reputation as aggressive and somewhat abrasive. Considering that this is what it takes to get anything actually done in District government, we can only hope that his permanent replacement is better at being diplomatic when the situation calls for it, and just as tough when the situation calls for that.

District Department of Mental Health director Martha B. Knisley has named two top deputies to assist in the transition from a Receivership -- court-ordered due to massive institutional failings in the District's mental-healthcare system -- to a city-controlled agency. Starting 2001 July 16, the Senior Deputy Directory will be one Anthony E. Thompson, formerly of Detroit's Wayne Center. Starting in August, the new Chief Executive Officer for St.-Elizabeth's Hospital will be one Joy Holland, with 15 years experience at the Michigan Department of Community Health, recently specializing in client-care and Federal compliance certification.

The DC Council has approved the appointments of David A. Clark as Director of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, and Jacques Abadie III as Director of the Office of Contracting and Procurements. Abadie is a veteran of 20 years in the Army, managing contracts. Clark was formerly the US Postmaster for the District from 1992 to 1999.

The DC Council has overridden a voter's Referendum imposing Term Limits on the DC Council and offices of the Mayor and the Board of Education's elected members. Also eneacted, a property-tax increase limit for the neighborhoods most affected by the change from tax assessments every three years, to yearly tax-assessment.

The DC Council has voted to accept the very generous $50 millions offer of Betty Brown Casey to build an offical Mayoral Mansion on 17 acres in upper NorthWest.

The DC Council voted to expand MedicAid eligibility. Covered, childless adults ages 19 to 27 making up to half of Federal poverty-level income, adults with no dependents aged 50 to 62 earning up to the poverty-level, and uninsured poor people with HIV.

The DC Council voted to require the Department of Parks and Recreation to hire eligible Welfare recipients.

The District Schools had planned for some 30,000 students attending this summer, but only about 20,000 have enrolled or are attending.

Nine District schools are to be restructured and given a make-over. All personnel at the schools, some 500 in all, are on notice that they will have to re-apply for their jobs. These were the nine most-poorly performing schools in the District. They are:

• H. D. Cooke Elementary, Ward 1
• R. H. Turrell Junior High, Ward 2
• LaSalle Elementary, Ward 4
• Noyes Elementary, Ward 5
• Phelps Career Senior High, Ward 5
• Kramer Middle School, Ward 6
• Davis Elementary, Ward 7
• Simon Elementary, Ward 8
• Turner Elementary, Ward 8

The District's "one-stop career centers" received a very poor evaluation from the DC Jobs Council and DC Employment Justice Center. Of 43 individuals tracked through the career-center's processes, none found work through using the career-center. According to the report, the test subjects were unable to receive even basic services.

The District's 5.75-percent tax on snack foods has been lifted effective 2001 June 9.

MPD will be using "radar cameras" to photograph speeders, who will be mailed tickets. This will suppliment the use of similar "red light cameras" which photograph red-light runners, who also will be mailed tickets.

The District's National Capital Revitalization Corporation has purchased 600 Water Street SW, for some $3.15 millions. This is hoped to be a core of a redevelopment effort for the SouthWest waterfront. Further plans were recently disclosed regarding Urban Planning for the nearby Anacostia Navy Yard area, which is presently a site of major reconstruction. We will try to bring you more on this as it develops.

16th Street NW between "M" and "U" Streets is being resurfaced, which is long overdue and badly needed. The project hopefully will be completed by the end of August.

To all intents and purposes, I am done. I've had it. The District will do just fine on its own, I have no doubts. Other things are now of much greater concern to me. While I've been wasting time on the District, Central America has been Invading. I will continue to run my search engines across sites dealing with the District, if you want opinions and suggestions, the search engines will direct you to opinions and suggestions. This site will remain as an archive and probably as an historical curiousity. If anything sufficiently interesting develops, I'll put it on a new page which will also be conveniently named "district.html". I just don't have the energy to devote to this anymore, nor do I really see the need: if Washington can't control the borders, the District will be a well-dressed paper tiger ruling over a non-nation, and populated by fools Inside the Beltway selling out the desires of the vast majority of the American People, just so they can have low-wage maids and gardeners and live in cheap luxury downtown while the rest of us wish we spoke Spanish so we could get any job at all. It's really difficult to muster any patriotic feeling any longer. Washington DC is, in every way on every day, getting better and better: and I Just Don't Care.

Thanks again for getting your insight on the District from a name you can trust, Earth Operations Central. This is 'klaatu' signing off.

Please visit the Old Cemetery off of Old Baltimore Road, near Twinbrook, in Rockville Maryland. It's very Gothic.

Please visit The Trash Force. Cleaning up our Homeworld, starting with the Greater Washington Metropolitan Region.

I am restructuring the Washington DC pages - the admittedly weird (but you ain't seen nothin' yet!) original Washington: Not a Pretty Site Page is here. Oh, before you go - a clue to the sarcasm-impaired: That page and most associated pages adhere strictly to my policy "if you can't beat them and you can't join them, mock them 'til their eyes bleed."

I'm also starting a page for the " other real Washington" - not necessarily the good parts, but the fun parts.

Other Voices, Other Visions

Fun Stuff

Visit the Earth Page. Save your Homeworld!

Visit the Business MetaIndex Page.

Visit the Computing MetaIndex Page.

Visit the Sciences MetaIndex Page.

Visit the Earth Operations Central District Office. Try a Glimpse HTTP Search (searches HTML content).