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Copyright (c) © (copr) 1998 all rights reserved by TJH
Internet SP and Earth Operations Central. Transmission or rebroadcast to any
non-Internet media, including radio or television, are expressly prohibited
except by arrangement. Each unauthorized retransmission to non-Internet
media will be billed at the statutory damages under US Copyright Law and the
Berne convention on Internet Copyright - $250,000 per instance, payable to
TJH Internet SP - an unregistered Maryland sole-propriety. "We'll bill you
later when you can least afford it." All comments are strictly my
unsupported opinion unless you would like to come and see for
yourself.Looking for the 1999 Washington DC Page?
Last updated 18 October 1998
What's happening here today? (this week for slow news days.) The WEIRDCON Weirdness Conditions for Washington page is up.
A fixed "clickable" Metro Map is located here as a public service of Earth Operations Central and TJH Internet SP.
| District Pages Header DCFRA Control Board Links Header |
Due to the size of this page, it has been split in half. If you're a first-time reader of this page, you may wish to acquaint yourself with What Has Gone Before. Please see:
Also see the Police Special Page.
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
Other Voices, Other Visions are here.
Please see the new Washington Metropolitan Police Department Page! Following reforms and investigations in and of the District Police.
.
Welcome to Washington. You've always wanted to come here, and now here you are! Or maybe you're here.
7 July 1998
Perhaps the poverty here has something to do with it. Certainly, there are
regions of the country where poverty is more widespread, or where the
average income, while perhaps not falling inside the brackets of the
Federally-defined poverty level, is not far above it. But few of those
places have the costs associated with the District, which has a nine-percent
sales tax, unusually-high rents, and is a city where it has long been said
that one is "poor on sixty-thousand a year". I know that I certainly could
not afford to live in the District of Columbia, even though I am single,
have no children, and receive a disability payment a third-again as large as
that formerly afforded to former Welfare recipients.
We wish very much to thank Michael Powell, of the Washington Post for his
incisive analysis
of 5 July 1998 entitled "But What About The Poor?". It's always nice to see
something I've been saying for a few years echoed by one of the
Post's rising stars. Mr. Powell notes with some dismay that the
District's mayoral candidates are almost entirely ignoring the issue of
poverty in the District. Why not? Everyone in the District, with the
exception of the poor themselves, ignores the poor. The most destitute and
needy, the disabled and homeless, are even to the working-poor, essentially
invisible.
In Washington DC, some 15 percent of the population lives in poverty, quite
often in a poverty which is some of the most grinding in the United States
outside of the generally blasted and worthless rural lands given over to
Reservations for our Native Americans. It should be noted that a great deal
of the extreme poverty of Washington is a legacy of the failed Democratic
entitlements system, a multigenerational relic of the well-intentioned, but
poorly-thought-out Johnson Era "Grand Society" and "Great Society" projects.
As the Republicans have come to be the majority in national politics, we
have seen a stunning turn-around in the economy, as the ever-more-massive
deadweight of the entitlements system was removed as a brake upon the
engines of commerce, and investment risk became an attractive proposition
rather than an eventual guaranteed loser. However, in Washington, a town of
which there is no equal in the solidity of the Democratic Party - a party
traditionally representing itself as the party of the poor, the downtrodden,
the disenfranchised, there has traditionally been exactly one way to
guarantee one's re-election, a way skillfully trodden by Marion Barry: get
the poor to the polls, let them know that you'll fight for them.
This year, nobody is fighting for the poor.
Washington has been rated as having a Welfare-to-Work program at the very
bottom of the heap. It is making no progress at all. We noted nearly
a year ago, as did the Post, all around with much dismay and wringing
of hands, that over half of the city's child-care and day-care centers, in
particular those to which the poor could turn to place their children as
they began training or a search for work, were operating without licenses
and without inspection. To some degree this has been remedied, but still
there is insufficient outreach to aid the working poor, and there is almost
no city nor Federal funding actually in use to aid those who seek to join
the ranks of the working-poor... training programs are essentially
non-existant, and training programs that provide useful skills that demand a
living wage are not to be found except at the hands of charity, personal
mentors, or guardian angels.
To quote literally anyone who is remotely familiar with the state of
local poverty-outreach affairs, "Washington's poor have never been more
marginalized."
It is a clear fact that during the Barry-Cronies (tm) administration, the
Barry Machine tended to promise anything to the poor to get them to vote,
and that Machine was able to reliably deliver the poor to the polls.
However, when it came to actual delivery of services, Barry's Machine was
generally only able to deliver huge salaries to incompetent mid-level
bureaucrats, who quite frequently merely lined their own pockets, and as a
rule, whatever has been delivered to the poor has been delivered by
charitable organizations, such as the Community for Creative Non-Violence,
DC Habitat for Humanity, or DC Food
Not Bombs.
During the recent years, it had become clear that despite fairly huge
expenditures, almost no benefits were actually accruing to the poor. There
were such ill-starred projects such as the notorious "homeless hotels",
where local Barry-supporting slumlords received outlandishly-high payments
for housing the "homeless" (more commonly career criminals and prostitutes).
These "homeless hotels" became not only dens of iniquity worthy of Babylon,
but also the foci of Washington's spiralling murder rate. Local outrage,
occasional law-enforcement activity (spotty at best, if one is to find past
police-department corruption, one need look no further than this), but more
commonly simple incompetence in application for Federal funding eventually
closed down this massively-wasteful and destructive system, the sole lasting
benefit of which was to line the pockets of Barry Machine allies. Of the
homeless-shelters which remain in the District, so far as I know, all are
funded entirely by charity, and none are administered by the District
government. For at least two years, the major contribution of the District
government as regards homelessness has been failure to shut down DC-owned
abandoned properties, which have been exposed by local news organizations as
nothing more than shooting-galleries for junkies and "Heroin Hotels". One
such shooting-gallery property in the Petworth Community was the site of a
discovery of a body which has led to the arrest of a man charged with serial
killings in Petworth.
Over the last few fiscal years, in particular since the DCFRA Control Board ascended to the
reins of budget power, there have been budget cuts of some 65 percent in
programs dealing with hunger, homelessness, and poverty-outreach.
Under the Barry Administration, a combination of rake-offs and incompetence
produced job-training programs which interestingly have in some cases
managed to spend budgets of millions of dollars without provably-spending
even one dollar to provably-train even one applicant. We have also noted in
earlier articles that as much as $55 millions of Federal Urban Empowerment Zones
monies went unapplied-for.
(
State of the Cities Report).
Washington's present mayoral candidates are, with the notable exception of
Anthony A. Williams, are
essentially turning their backs on the poor. Jack Evans, whom we had
formerly tentatively endorsed, is paraphrased by the Post as saying
he would, if elected, restore not one dime to any of the hunger,
homelessness, or poverty-outreach programs. Rumor has it that the remark was
paraphrased mostly due its vehemence and unprintability, as in "**** the
poor". Both Evans and his opponent Kevin P. Chavous take the
extremely-uncharitable approach that the recent major reductions in not only
the unemployment payouts rates, but also the disability allowance rates,
were long overdue corrections, according to the Post.
There appear to be, in this present race, only two actual supporters of a
restoration (I would argue, "a first successful primary implimentation") of
outreach programs for the hungry, the homeless, the impoverished, and in
particular the struggling working-poor. These are Mr. John Gloster, of the
DC Statehood Party (with whose political goals we otherwise strongly
disagree, preferring to grant Maryland voting rights to residents of the
District of Columbia as part of a limited retrocession), who argues that the
city can best restore itself through vigorously investing in programs for
the poor, in particular programs aiding the children of the poor, in
particular training. Regarding this, please see our arguments elsewhere; there are
fairly vast resources already available to the District government which
would handily lend themselves to such projects, which we whole heartedly
support.
Another supporter of expanded poverty outreach programs is mayoral candidate
Anthony A. Williams. As the Chief Financial Officer who has presided over
many of the cuts in the poverty-outreach programs, and as the man who
brought the District its first budget surplus in years, we believe he can do
it. Insofar as he will actually try, we will give him our total support.
While it is not clear from the context in which his remarks are reported by
the Post, we can ourselves add a context of which Mr. Williams should
be aware and which he should "own": If money was being misspent, he knows
where it was being misspent. If it was being used effectively in any given
program, he should know that also. If his budget cuts were tantamount to a
roundabout way of offloading rapscallion carpetbaggers taking the city to
the cleaners and leaving the poor out in the cold, we absolutely applaud
him. Mr Williams has said, regarding the budget cuts, and noting in an aside
that he proposes accessing the vast Federal resources which are available
but which remain unapplied-for, "Yes, we were in a crisis, and
we did what we had to do... To say that we should invest in social resources
is not a bad thing. It will redound to everyone's benefit.
We at Earth Operations Central could not agree more. And now that the City
is on firm financial footing, now that the police department is under new,
and hopefully incorruptable command, now that the new City Manager is in
place and evidently looking forward to making heads roll and being a new
broom sweeping clean in this rat-infested dung-pile of a formerly great city
and with the aid of the DCFRA, Congress, the President and just-about
everybody moving this mess right along into again being something of which
America can be proud, we at Earth Operations Central intend to completely
revise our focus on these Washington DC Pages.
At a recent meeting of the DC.Story
city-issues mailgroup, I "un-stealthed" and announced to a visiting radio
announcer, as part of a roundrobin introducing ourselves, that I pretty-much
wrote web-pages which covered cronyism, nepotism, crime, corruption, and
occasionally vice in our Nation's Capital, and also tried to cover such
things as homelessness, poverty-outreach, hunger, the work-to-welfare
transition, and firmly stated that I might not look like much, but I get out
and I speak to, and with, and intended to speak for those who could
not access the internet, who could not address the media, who had no ear
willing to hear them, no hand to feed them, nor shake their hand, nor give
them a hand up instead of a hand-out. I was promptly derided by a local wag
as a classical paranoid which is probably not far from the truth. After all,
this is Washington, and considering the heinousness of the classical
Washington psychotic-bumrush to which I was subjected after this political
slandering (let's just say I'll never eat at our meetingplace again, and
wouldn't have it any other way), perhaps I feel that I have justifiable
reasons for my paranoia. However, this has only cemented my resolve to do
what I had said I would do - while we will of course cover, for the Nation
and for the local oversight Powers-That-Be, all noteworthy news which comes
to our attention (in particular that which we know to be happening but which
remains unreported elsewhere), Earth Operations Central now has a new set of
primary mission objectives.
We are now less about fixing potholes, and more about getting people off of
the streets. We are now less about firing lazy slackabeds who lined their
pockets in proportion to their contributions to the Barry-Cronies(tm)
Administration, and we are more about finding competent, diligent, and
above-all, caring, people to replace them. We are now less about tearing
down the old, than building up the new.
In an agricultural nation second to none on Earth, in economic
boom times not exceeded in living memory within a technical-industrial
expansion unparallelled in the region, in a city where Masters' Degrees are
literally unremarkable and commonplace, it is absolutely unforgivable that a
single person who can rise to their feet could go hungry. In a city with a
sudden budget surplus, with more surplusses expected to come, with a City
University that is grossly underused, it is absolutely unforgivable that a
single adult or late-teens person needing life-skills or
employability-factors should go untrained. In a city with city-owned
abandoned repairable housing, and a well-organized Volunteer Housebuilding Organization,
available Federal millions only awaiting application, and a public housing
receiver known for his approaches to - and successes with - restoring
defunct public-housing systems, it's absolutely insupportable that people
sleep amid the rats and trash of a Nation's Capital's streets. While we have
a robust economy, training facilities, abandoned housing, and available
federal funding and a pre-existing organization demonstrably skilled at
teaching people how to build or restore houses, it's absolutely unforgivable
that the homeless aren't getting fed and exercised as they're trained to
build the houses that they will eventually own.
While the high-and-mighty bicker, while bureaucrats stall and jockey for
advantage in office-politics and career-advancement, we will be quietly
gathering information, marshalling resources, building coalitions, and where
the homeless have not had a voice, they'll have one now. When the
"untrainable mentally-ill" are passed by on the streets with a spit or a
kick, that could be me taking notes for later distribution worldwide via
Internet. Sure, I'm mad. Quite mad. Madder'n'hell to use a phrase that any
politician should recognize and respect. When the impoverished are tossed
out of their homes, and set onto the streets with their children and all
that they own, it may well be that this will be the internet page that
documents the accountable party, parties, or Party - if that person provably
wound up on the streets because some bureaucrat lazily didn't fill out a
form that would make childcare available to that person so that they could
be trained and employed and start paying taxes, if there's a way to get that
bureaucrat and whoever let them stay in that job up on this page and
a hundred others, believe me - I'll do it. Anything I can, anytime I can,
anyplace I can, if someone could be and should be helped and it's not
happening, I intend to make a thousand voices angrily question why. It may
be fashionable to march in lockstep and recite "let them eat cake". But
fashions change, and in the grand American style, our institutionalized
revolution, the election, is coming 'round again... and people vote what's
most on their minds, and what's most on their minds is what they've been
hearing the most. As best I can, while on the streets of this Nation's
Capital a single person sleeps cold, hungry, unfed, and uncared-for, rest
assured - you will never hear the end of it, not the voters, and not the
politicians.
This page has been scathingly criticized elsewhere as a mere gadfly's
raggings-on and as a rhetorical exercise devoid of any attempts at solving
anything. Insofar as I can in the future arrange it, "I got your solutions
right here". I've been on vacation for a year now, and since it's political
season again, I'm coming out of retirement. There's a solution right there,
above on this page. It's one that works; a variation of this has been
trumpted far and wide as having been the great success of David Gilmore, the
court-appointed Public Housing Receiver. Admittedly, utilization of
available Federal "Brownfields" and "Empowerment Zones" funding to employ
the homeless and welfare-to-work transitioners restoring abandoned housing
and converting it into housing for said homeless and transitioners is going
to be seen as a complete waste of time to anyone who's only interested in
lining their pockets or the pockets of campaign-contributors, and besides,
in the emerging class-struggle in Washington it's counterproductive - it's
not moving all of the non-rich out of town.
This just isn't morally acceptable and besides, those non-rich might have
other ideas. I think I'll go organize a voter-registration drive... and I
think I'll organize it in Montgomery County Maryland's 8th Congressional
District, to which many of the poor have fled. They'll be voting for one of
the Powers-That-Be on the District Appropriations Committee.
Coming soon - links, and more links, to and between various organizations
which feed, minister-to, house, provide medical care to, and empower, the
poor.
Hmmm, the morning paper just came...
And it is with great pleasure that we announce that the "DC Department of
Housing and Community Development is now accepting proposals to develop
afordable housing through the homestead Housing Preservation Program. All
properties require some level of rehabilitation to meet housing code
standard; in some instances they require new construction. Properties will
be sold for $250.00 a unit and must be developed for sale to first-time
homebuyers. Priority will be given to proposals received from tenant and
cooperative associations, as well as from nonprofit developers."
Well "jes' shut my mouth".
Some 32 properties, comprising 186 units (some occupied), three shells, and
eight vacant lots, just came on the market for dirt-cheap. Some properties
will be razed by the City.
Requests for Participation (RFP) may be had at:
Thank you, Richard Monteihl, Director DCHCD, and Lynn French, Administrator
of the Homestead Program Administration.
18 July 1998
In the alleys of Washington, which sometimes are distinguished from the
secondary roads only by the fact that they wind circuitously through a leafy
urban jungle where feral undergrowth returns to reclaim the Maryland
swamplands upon which the city was laid. But in these alleys, more than the
underbrush alerts you to the ever-present nearness of wilderness. At night,
the rats come forth, and to walk through many of Washington's alleys without
a nice set of workboots is to invite the risk of rabies as the rats of
Washington, some of which approach the size of cats, are bold and hungry.
Most of the rats, however, don't make it to the size of these
mythically-proportioned monsters. At night one hears a rustle, and a squeal,
and looking more closely, one sees gleaming the satisfied and wicked yellow
eyes of cats. Entire, if simplified, ecologies and economies flourish in the
streets between the streets.
The District's alleys and margins have also become increasingly populated by
what some see as the "second city" of Washington. It's a part of the city
with which tourists and visitors remain essentially unfamiliar, except for
the occasional blundering wrong-turn downtown. However, in a city designed
for pedestrians and carriages, yet increasingly taken over by the
automobile, businesses large and small, legitimate and criminal, have taken
to the alleys, to their quads, and the nature of these alleys - many of
which are of limited vehicular access yet which provide much greater access
to pedestrians or bikes - provides much of the small-town and close-knit
secret life of Washington. It's no secret that this writer much prefers the
alleys of Washington to most of the streets. I leave business to the streets
and the tourists - the real Washington is in the houses, the parks, the
offices, and the alleys.
An good example of this would be the quad enclosed by the hi-rise offices in
the Golden Triangle area, between
"L" and "M", and 18th and 19th streets NW. There are several shops, and a
few popular bars. If you're trying to drive there, forget it. If you're on
foot, it's mostly a pleasant respite from the traffic. Executives can get
blotto and wander out on the patio and not have to keep an eye out for
rampaging taxi-drivers.
But the alleys, the second city of Washington, can also be home to a great
many things that are less than pleasant. In some areas, in particular those
parts of town which have limited access to even the main streets due to
construction or the terrain, there are alleys which frighten even the most
bold of the rats. Discarded and infectious hypodermics glint amidst the
piles of trash and abandoned furniture and stripped vehicles. Amidst the
trash, homeless ragpickers scour for trinkets and baubles to work into
"found art". Some of the vehicles - which may have not moved for years - are
homes to addicts, or are used for purposes of sleazy two-minute trysts by
the local street prostitutes.
District officals have embarked on a series of ambitious projects designed
to make the streets of the District of Columbia safer, cleaner, and more
attractive.
In a move that is long overdue, for the first time, an end-to-end sweep of
the District's alleys is to be made, with a first-run sweep removing
accumulated trashpiles and abandoned furniture, and with a second run
cleaning up the smaller stuff.
According to Public Works director Cellerino C. Bernadino, "For the first
time, every alley in the city will be cleaned on a schedule.... This first
round will set the benchmarks for performance tracking." We believe that Mr.
Bernardino has little idea of what a job his crew has in front of them. In
some areas, crews may enter alleys and find that they're a lot cleaner than
are the streets outside. In other areas, they may enter and discover, in
the inner city scrub-forests, jungles of infectious wildlife jealously
defending the trash upon which it feeds.
Recently, Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey was hauled up before
the DC Council's Judiciary Committee. He acknowledged that "[t]here could be
better deployment". Ramsey is a leading proponent (one of the major
innovators in fact) of "Community policing", in which officers and their
superiors make a strong effort to get to know, and to heed input from, the
neighbors whose safety they are tasked to assure. He notes that in many
inner-city areas, there are simply not enough officers to ensure quick
response times. We might make the suggestion that - as long as there's to be
in increase in foot or bicycle patrols, and open-air roll-calls - a police
presence be instituted in some of the alley-quads. Officers would thus
deploy from, and not respond into, areas which are invisible from the
streets.
Chief Ramsey, interstingly, is not averse to getting out and doing some
neighborhood relations work himself. Nor is he averse to trying to do
something about the wildlife in town. He was recently seen wandering the
prostitute-infested neighborhoods of Logan Circle.
Washington DC has one of the country's largest per-capita populations of
prostitutes, and in few places are they in such sad shape as in Washington.
The HIPS Organization notes that
nearly half of the local prostitutes, from call-girls to hardened
streetwalkers, are not of legal age, quite frequently "owned" by pimps, and
even so long ago as 1989, compulsory HIV tests of arrested streetwalking
prostitutes indicated a nearly-99-percent HIV infection rate. Residents of
the Logan Circle and parts of the Shaw Neighborhoods find that at nighttime,
it can be almost impossible to drive in their own neighborhoods due to the
immense numbers of motorists lined up looking for their preferred hooker(s).
Services available on the street range from girls who should really be home
studying their 8th-grade algebra, to terminally-diseased transvestite
hookers who inexplicably seem to do a booming business near the Department
of the Interior annex at Massachesetts and "L" NW. Both Chief Ramsey and his
second-in-command Terrance Gainer have expressed a rather outraged and
stunned dismay over the brazen boldness of the local hookers, wich Gainer
characterized as being more out of control than outside of a Navy base on
payday.
Past attempts to even-temporarily address this state of affairs have proved
at best of minimal impact, including one approach which nearly led to a
revival of the Civil War between the District and Virginia. At one time,
officers had simply rounded up every single female dressed for
streetwalking, written them a citation for soliciting, and marched them
across the 14th Street bridge into Alexandria, where they promptly took up
stations surrounding the Pentagon.
Recently, the DC Council passed a law, which would be valid for only 90
days, which would allow MPD officers very wide discretion and broadens the
scope of what is considered soliciation. The law allows officers to arrest
any person in a public space who repeatedly tried to engage passersby in
conversation or stops or beckons to traffic for the purpose of prostitution.
Formerly, the law required witnessing of money changing hands, or of a
negotiated transaction. Also, the law had little provision for dealing with
the customers, other than vehicle-seizures, which has not been widely
accepted; also the law simply didn't much address the real problem here,
which is the pimps. The average pimp may make as much as $75,000 per year
per "property", tax-free.
Jack Evans, who is running for Mayor, is quoted by the Washington Post as saying:
"We have to make it really hard for them to make a living here".
The Post also quotes Yolanda Pounds, of HIPS, and with this we must
agree, as noting that there is almost no resource available for prostitutes,
other than to continue to ply their trade. "If the city wants to do
something, if should help us rehabiitate these young ladies and find
different programs to get them into."
This brings up the issues of the City of Washington's extremely downsized
poverty-outreach programs. While ranking next-to-last on the efficiency or
success of national
Welfare-to-Work programs, the city is home to some of the most grinding
poverty in the "civilized world". Please see my diatribe above regarding the
alleys of DC - there are people living in the alleys just about like our
ancestors lived in caves, essentially hunting and gathering, and for very
similar reasons: little or no education, and little or no society. Society
is at best tending to increasingly regard the homeless and the poor as
something to be eradicated. Homelessness and Poverty must indeed be
eradicated, but those are Conditions which should be eradicated. Eradicating
the People who Suffer under those Conditions, at present through mere
attrition and turning a blind eye to the problems, is less than humane.
As I've said, I really do prefer the alleys. I meet people, some of whom are
less-than-pleasant company, and I meet some who, but for the grace of god
and me having been homeless in a state and city which had effective and
speedy poverty-outreach systems (Austin Texas, 1994), would be myself. Often
intelligent, certainly resourceful, pressed to the limits of endurance and
sanity and quite-frequently beyond, I hear the same things repeated by one
after the other.
What do the homeless, the poor, and particularly the disabled want?
30 July 1998
We also note with dismay the passing of two of the Nation's Finest, US
Capitol Police Officers, Detective John M. Gibson, and Officer Jacob J.
Chestnut, laid to rest today in Arlington National Cemetery with full
military honors. Those officers are due those honors, above and beyond their
military histories, for they came under fire performing the essential task
of simultaneously guarding, and permitting free access to, the United States
Capitol Building, which remains open to the public as it ever must.
While the typically-paranoid Washington media have outlined assorted plans
to turn the Monumental Core into an even more fortified seige zone, the
wiser heads in Washington affirmed that the US Capitol, as the People's
Hall, will remain freely accessible to all who come in peace.
DCFRA Control Board member Constance Berry
Newman has decided that she will stay on into a second term of service.
This unpaid postition will be retained as well as her formal position as
second-in-command as Undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Her
credentials include top-level leadership positions as Director of US Office
of Personnel Management, Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA),
Commissioner and vice-chair of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission,
and asssistant Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban
Development. she was at one point in time being considered for the position
of Chairman of the Control Board, which position is being vacated by Andrew
F. Brimmer, who reportedly remarked that she knows more "...about management
in the government than the rest of us."
Ms. Newman is reportedly very well-liked by the other Control Board members
and was effusively praised by the new Chairman of the Control Board, Alice
M. Rivlin. Ms. Newman will assume the oversight of the reforms of the
District's schools, which are now undergoing and extreme rebuild under the
aegis of School Superintendant Arlene Ackerman.
Recently, Dr. Ackerman fired upwards of 600 personnel. The District Schools
Personnel Office had been characterized by records-keeping so horrifically
bad that there was no clear idea as to exactly how many employees were on
the payroll. Dr. Ackerman has fired almost all personnel in the Personnel
Office of the District Schools, essentially severing the neck of the ogre
which has for decades been devouring the education opportunities of the
District's children.
Nationwide, a great many school systems - beset by performance problems and
mission-creep of the same order (if not scale) as the District Schools -
have embarked upon massive reforms, and after a certain amount of practice a
certain amount of expertise has been developed. Dr. Ackerman was considered
instrumental in the reforms of the Seattle WA school-system. Dr. Ackerman
has embarked upon a program of "reconstitution" of at least one school, a
process wherein the internal operations and much of the poor-performer
school are essentially gutted prior to complete re-organization. Dr.
Ackerman enjoys a position probably unique in her career and certainly
unique within living memory in the District; above her, she has in
direct-oversight, Constance Berry Newman, an organizational specialist and
administrator-supreme with experience in managing organizations far-larger
than the District Schools. Dr. Ackerman herself is a re-organizational
specialist also-blessed with nearly-impeccable credentials in education and
a highly-touted track record. Below her, she has clean-swept the more
useless and dysfunctional personnel, but before her, she has yet to replace
the Personnel Office with functional systems. (This is of little consequence
at this juncture, since a lack of personnel does no more good than, and
probably less harm than, the former staff and system.)
Yet ahead of Dr. Ackerman are even more sweeping changes. First, she has
fired, or given leave for early retirement, at least 20 principals, and has
reportedly targeted at least 20 more, along with associated high-level
staffers in schools slated for reconstitution or reformation. The
Alternative Education department is targeted for almost-total
reconstruction, with at least 50 staffers having been fired. The Alternative
Education program, originally intended for specialized and intensive
remedial efforts for disruptive, troubled, or pre-psychotic children and
youths, had been categorized by some as merely an open playground for
emerging monsters. We presume that this will be the presently-unspecified
facility scheduled for total reconstitution. Dr. Ackerman has said that most
of these staffers will be permitted to re-apply for positions elsewhere
within the system. She's also sent a new budget to Congress asking for a
budget for the schools of some $545 million, which is increased by nearly
$90 millions. Unfortunately, the District Schools Special Education programs
are among the most dysfunctional of such programs nationwide, with the
second-worst performance record in the country. Legal actions from all sides
have forced a massive cost-shifting of other District Schools funding into
emergency remediation of these programs.
Also getting the axe was the director of Food Services. The food at the
District Schools is considered by many as being unfit for animal feed, much
less for consumption by the District's children. (Let's just say that the
homeless don't go anywhere near the schools' dumpsters when snack-diving.) A
proposal has been circulated to allow third-party vendors to provide food
for the pupils. In any case, the fact that the District School remain
extremely unsafe facilities, permeated as they are by non-enrolled dropouts,
troublemakers and gangsters, could well be moderated by a co-location of
vendors, concurrent with restrictions on off-campus lunches and concomitant
enhancements of security under an "in-or-out-all-day" access-control
policy.
Meanwhile, the repairs of the decaying physical facilities continues. Work
proceeds apace, but there are some concerns that the District Procurement
Office remains rife with corruption and is in fact the sole-remaining
bastion of pure Barry-Cronies(tm) policies of pocket-lining between backroom
buddies. (We are convinced of this, having submitted the proper applications
to get on their Vendors/Bidders list, and have been notified to solicit for
exactly none of the some-200 contracts under our vendor category.) However,
there evidently remain a few true heroes bucking the tide, one Richard Fite
is credited with doing an Herculean job of assuring multiple-teirs of backup
contractors in case of primary contractor default or malfeasance/disbarrment
in fulfillment of school-repair contracts.
Dr. Ackerman is attempting to secure additional budgetary increases to
enable raises to attract and/or retain competent professionals to the
District Schools. A hoped-for raise from an average of $27,000 to $30,000
per year is reportedly in the works. Keep in mind that this is a very low
salary in a city where one is considered poor with an income of
$65,000/year.
Budgetary resources may be forthcoming.
The District financial outlook continues to improve. The Senate
Appropriations Subcommittee on the District, headed by controversial North
Carolina Republican Lauch Faircloth, credits improved tax collections and
the rebounding District real-estate market (the Washington-Baltimore
corridor, outside of the District proper, led the nation in housing starts
and other development since 1990) for much of the surplus. The District's
tax and permits-fees collection agency, the District Department of Consumer
and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA), came under fire in the last two years as being
incomprehensibly-byzantine, "dysfunctional to the point of collapse", and a
"textboook example of how to not-run a city agency". The "newer, meaner"
DCRA is now considered as having been "substatially reformed" and tax
collection is now extremely aggressive, at least as regards tax-collection.
Substantive questions still remain over their regulattory efforts, in
particular within the intergrade between the DC Department of Health and the
DCRA, as regards liquor licensing and sanitation inspections, and also in
child-care-facility licensing.
The Senate version of the "consensus budget", slapped-together by outgoing
Mayor Marion Barry, the DC Council, and the DCFRA Control Board. The Senate
version included, above and beyond the consensus-budget's requested
allocations, an additional lordly sum of some $250 millions, much of it
dedicated to surface-road repairs, and also adding Metrorail Station
development at the site of the finally-approved future Convention Center
Site. The House Appropriations Subcommittee version of the bill slashes most
of those additional surface-road and Metrorail development funds. The Senate
version also includes (but it is unclear whether or not this language is
retained in the House version; we hope so) a proviso that the
District may not require employees of the District to reside in the
District. Also included in the Senate version was a restriction which
prohibits the District from using any Federal monies to agitate for
its admission as a State, or to sue the Federal government for full voting
rights for the residents of the District of Columbia.
Also included in the bill was an appropriation for spending by the US Park
Police to acquire a helicopter intended exclusively for use within the
confines of the District's airspace. This was, surprisingly, fought by DC
Delegate (non-voting) Eleanor Holmes Norton. The dismemberment of the
District's Metropolitan Police Department's helicopter fleet was,
interestingly, one of the first "austerity" acts by Mayor Marion Barry as he
led the city into a financial meltdown. It's no surprise that as he
"mothballed" the fleet, violent crime in the District skyrocketed. The
District's helicopter fleet, once touted as one of the nation's finest city
airfleets, had for many years served as a major asset of District
law-enforcement personnel, though many citizens would probably have
preferred that the District's "choppers" had quieter engines. We note that
at present, outside of possibly renting a blimp from Goodyear or begging to
the military for satellite-access, District law-enforcement has absolutely
no airborne surveillance capability, and no airborne response capability
exists.
Congressman Charles H. Taylor, a North Carolina Republican and Chairman of
the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the District, is the leading
Congressional proponent of a requirement for District employees to be
District residents. Most of the other subcommittee members, both House and
Senate, are from districts which adjoin the District of Columbia, and many
of their constituents work for the District government. Taylor is quoted by
the Washington Post as
saying "I've long maintained that city employees should be the first leg of
rebuilding the city... so it makes sense to require over time that they move
into DC." We disagree for some reasons, and agree for others. First, the
cost of living in the District is so high that city employees at present
pay-rates will be forced to live in the worst neighborhoods, or will forever
have their hands out for bribes in order to pay the bills. On the other
hand, we can argue that the real business of any District resident is to be
considered as legitimate only in the context of servicing the
Constitutionally-defined seat of government, and therefor as a sort of
second-tier Federal employee, akin to the military, residency might
legitimately be required. It thus follows that it may be argued that a
residency requirement is in reality an argument against any future Home
Rule. Representative Taylor sums it all up best when he says: "...[t]he same
people who beat you over the head not to trample on Home Rule are the same
ones who ask you to help them on the inside... it's quite interesting to
watch."
There have also been, within the various Appropriations Subcommittees'
wanglings, questions over whether or no the statutory authority of the DCFRA
Control Board, and their appointed City Manager Camille Cates Barnett PhD,
should automatically extend to any reorganized or "spin-off" authorities
created by management reforms of District Government. This issue remains
as-yet unresolved. In any case, both the Senate and House versions of the
approved DC Budget has yet to clear votes in the full House and Senate.
City Manager (or more properly, "Chief Management Officer") Camille Cates
Barnett had, for some months, conducted a nationwide search for top
positions within several city agencies. From her candidates list, Mayor
Marion Barry selected three new department heads.
For the position of Director of the Department of Employment Services (DES),
one Gregory P. Irish of Santa Cruz California. We already like this guy, he
agrees with our own assessment that the city desperately needs to reform DES
to better provide people with jobs, instead of simply handing out the dole
checks. We like him even better because Mr. Irish, much like Earth
Operations Central, bases opinions on firsthand experience with these
agencies. We like him even much more because he, much like Earth Operations
Central, got his firsthand experience, and before actually taking the job,
by dressing for the street and putting himself through the process of going
through the system as a customer. His reported remarks? "I wasn't
impressed". We hope that Mr. Irish will rapidly expand (or more properly,
"initiate") functional training programs. We hope, in fact, that he will
read some of our diatribes on the District's dearth of training
opportunities, and will make some use of the horribly-underused University
of the District of Columbia's staff and facilities. At any rate, he's got a
huge and daunting task ahead of him: Mr. Irish gets to tackle the job of
turning around the nation's worst
Welfare-To-Work program.
Also selected, for the position of Director of the Department of Consumer
and Regulatory Affairs, is one Lloyd J. Jordan, a present staffer of the
City Manager, a former chief administrative officer of St. Louis Missouri,
and a lawyer. The Post notes that Jordan has come under fire in his
native St. Louis for lots of personal business conducted on city time, and
accusations of improper conflicts-of-interest in a city deal with a
supermarket. We have none of the particulars and know nothing of these
matters, but we can only hope that he was not selected by Marion Barry,
master of corruption and cronyism, for being perceived as a kindred
spirit.
Finally, we announce the final selection of one Suzanne J. Peck as director
of the Office of Technology. Ms. Peck is characterized by the Post as
a 20-year veteran of office automation and strategic-planning. Earth
Operations Central wishes that either she, or her appropriate delegate,
would return our calls. We did speak to one "Bill Clemens", who called us
once, acted extremely paranoid and somewhat hostile, wanting to know "what
we wanted" from our proposal to give a
free Linux Internet Host System, hardware included, to the District
government, totally free of charge. We also note that when we tried to reach
her directly by telephone, in roughly mid-June, a call directed to her desk
was intercepted by an individual who was not an employee of the City of
Washington, who listened to my sales pitch and then attempted to mis-direct a
written proposal to a
mailbox at his evidently sole-sourced firm,
Maximus. Enquiring minds want to know
why the voice-mail at the DC Office of Technology is answered "Office of
Technology/Maximus".
19 August 1998
However, I do not wish anyone to believe that this particular voice has been
successfully silenced, although I will be blunt and state outright that it's
not due to lack of trying.
August is a month in which, as a rule, very little happens in Washington. In
particular, it's ordinarily the month when anyone with a lick of sense gets
out of town, and also Congress vacates. As a result, the place tends to turn
into something commonly described as a ghost-town. Tourism tends to decline,
as our Washington Augusts are reknowned worldwide as true horrors for those
who have allergies and don't tolerate the horrid humidity and heat. However,
due to the political circus revolving around Kenneth Starr, the independent
prosecutor investigating (among other things) the confessed Presidential
infidelities, has consumed a great deal of attention here in Washington,
among those who have remained. Little attention has been paid to local
politics, even by local politicians.
But Labor Day will soon be upon us, when Washingtonians of means return from
wherever it is that they vacation. Once again, the pundits will pontificate,
myself among them. And as return the power-elite, so shall their staffers
return, to swell the ranks of Washington's discontent, and as the fall
marches on, we'll see assorted sortings-out in the mayoral and council
races. We also predict that there is an excellent chance that once again
Washington will gird for war. We will not cover that issue on this page,
though we will of course add our voice to the cacaphony on UseNet and
elsewhere. As has been remarked elsewhere, "World War III will be almost
entirely an information war, with no clear line of division between the
military and the civilian efforts". Now that the trivialities of the
Lewinski Affair no longer occupy most local broadcast time, nor divert
public awareness and opinion from more pressing matters such as the
overrunnings of our borders combining with a degrading state of military
readiness and dysfunctional internal insurgency-control organizations
compromised by the FileGate Affair, we expect that there will be an
increased public focus on these issues as well as increasing foreign-policy
difficulties ranging from the terrorism of rogue states such as Iraq, or
well-funded transnational terrorist organizations such as that of Osama bin
Laden, or the North American threat of well-armed
illegal-alien gangsters, whose increasing presence and deployment begins
to resemble a map of a main-force insurgency, unopposed by a President whose
main concern has apparently been to hide his zipper-control problem.
But I digress, and now on to simple Washingtonia, as a sleepy southern town
with no real reason to be here (besides the fact that George Washington
wanted it across the river from his wife's estate) dreams fitfully amid the
summer's heat, all unaware that outside the gates the mad dogs gather.
President Clinton, in early August, appointed the final replacements for the
members of the DCFRA Control Board. These members are:
On 6 August 1998, Control Board Chairman Andrew F. Brimmer cancelled a
contract worth nearly $900,000, which was improperly awarded to an associate
of Chief Management Officer (city manager) Camille Cates Barnett. As we
reported in our last installment, there is increasing evidence that
Washington has too long been steeped in the culture of corruption, and that
that particular bug is catching. Perhaps all that's been done so far
regarding management reform, in many cases, is that the old bastards and
their cronies have been thrown out, and new bastards forcibly installed
instead. The "erroneous" assignment of contract was claimed to be the
responsibility of procurement specialist Richard Fite.
Both Control Board policy and Federal Law prohibit non-competitive contracts
in excess of $500,000 dollars from being awarded here. However, Dr. Barnett
exceeded her authority and granted a non-bidded contract to a former
co-worker from Houston, one Cheryl L. Dotson of Houston, for management
consultancy. Reportedly, Dotson had withrawn from competitive bidding
because "side work" she was already doing for Barnett exceeded the purview
of the contract for which she bid.
Dr. Brimmer has stated that he didn't think that this was cronyism, but we
are less certain. However, as regards the actual progress of management
reform, reportedly Dotson's work performance has been laudable. All that is
in question is the impropriety of awarding a contract outside of proper
procedure.
The DCFRA Control Board has confirmed the appointments of:
The District of Columbia has seeded $900,000 to the creation of an effort to
market the District as a place for businesses. Richard Montielh, director of
the District's Department of Housing and Community Development, is
reportedly set to aggressively promote the District as the perfect spot for
corporate national-headquarters.
District Schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman has decided to appoint new
principals at one-fourth of the city's schools. 39 new principals will be
designated. 29 schools had vacancies for the position. She will also replace
the entire staff of Shadd Elementary. Also in for a complete roll-over is
the Alternative Education Department.
Congress has approved a District of Columbia issue of $685 millions in
bonds, to finance the new Convention Center to be located to the north of
Mount Vernon Square.
Addenda: Suburbia
Prince George's County, which is the eastern border of Washington DC from
Takoma Park Maryland down to the Potomac River, has been having a little
problem with law-enforcement. No, it's not that the police department of
this majority-black county is being indiligent, they have in fact been
making arrests at record rates. In particular, they've done a very good job
of co-ordinating with the District's Metropolitan Police Department and with
border-jumping Federal units such as the US Park Police, which has had an
increasing role in the increasingly-Federalized District. What's been going
wrong in Prince George's County rather lies in the office of the Sheriff.
The Sheriff, the only elected law-enforcement agent in the Maryland system
(all other law-enforcement in Maryland is part of the executive branch, with
no public-oversight or recall mechanism), has been reduced to a status which
is essentially disgraceful: the Sheriff is an essentially powerless tool of
the courts, with duties restricted almost solely to the management of
prisoner services. It is the Sheriff's duty to serve arrest warrants, and
act as Bailiff. Prince George's County Sherriff James V. Aluisi has allowed
a backlog of nearly 40,000 warrants to accumulate, unserved. Most county
police officers, and even officers from other jurisdictions including the
District, have been making arrests as they serve their own warrants. If
you're a US Marshall, you might consider paying a visit to Prince George's
County, which has of late become a local gangster-magnet due to the
inability of the Sheriff's department to serve warrants.
Washington Unregistered
Local cops are very displeased in-general with the District of Columbia,
including officers of the Metropolitan Police Department.
As many as 10 percent of DC motorists are driving motor vehicles with
fraudulent license plates and/or inspection stickers.
The problem with the inspection stickers is extremely widespread. At
least 300 motorists are arrested monthly for bogus inspection stickers. It
should be added that, unlike the exhaustive one-time inspections in
neighboring Maryland, District vehicle inspections are rather cursory, and
mostly examine such safety equipment as headlights.
The bogus license-tags issue is a more thorny one. There is a thriving
black-market in forged, altered, or stolen license plates. Extremely popular
with the scofflaw segment of the population, this causes a major loss of
revenue for the District (which has unreasonably low fines for bad-tagging),
and places a great risk on the public: most of these tags are acquired for
the express purpose of evading the insurance requirement for motor
vehicles, or to evade tracking by the police or parking-enforcement
employees.
11 September 1998
First, as we predicted in our last entry, in fact even as we typed, this
nation began to gird itself for war. Some 70 cruise-missiles were launched
against the Afghanistanian training camps of one Osama bin Laden, a
millionaire fundamentalist formerly of the anti-Soviet Mujaheddin, and now
an avowed foe of all things American. Other cruise-missile strikes were
directed against a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which target may have
been mistakenly indicated as a manufactory of precursors for binary nerve
gasses. These strikes were in retaliation for the bombings, linked to the
organization of Osama bin Laden, of two US Embassies, in Nairobi Kenya, and
in Dar Es Salaam Tanzania. At last, US policy recognizes that the War of The
Future will increasingly be less a war between conventional armed forces,
and more of a proactive effort against
" Low-Intensity
Conflict in
Urbanized Terrain".
August has seen a local growth-industry in the emplacement of "jersey
barriers" and other anti-truckbomb technologies all over town. One of the
more publicized sites is the Washington Monument, which now has a protective
ring around its base. In other locations, the increase in security is less
obvious but nonetheless intensified. Abroad, there have been intensified
security measures at US Embassies, which many have thought to be
long-overdue. Also, as these security measures have been increased, there
has been an increase in probings of those defenses. We can reasonably assume
that the very large local population of foreign-born refugees and former
dissidents will contain elements who will engage in a variety of similar
probings of local defenses. Indeed, the former "justified-paranoia" of the
old Cold War will certainly once-again pervade Washington. Yet, where before
there was a limit to the activities of spies and saboteurs - as nobody
wanted to risk a full-scale war between the US and other territorial
governments - there may now be no limits to sabotage, assassinations and
mass-murders perpetrated against Americans on US soil, enacted by suicidal
fanatics funded by nebulous and shadowy overseas associations and
organizations with no known address. We wish to note that as it became
evident that the $70-millions missile-strike was less-than-successful in
eliminating the bin-Laden organization, instead only increasing resolve
against America in much of Islam, many of the local foreign-born communities
seem to have become agitated and are presumed to be organizing their own
militias. How many of these would act, either directly or in a more-covert
mode, against Americans at home, remains to be seen. All that can be done is
to stand ready and to always bear in mind that eternal vigilance is no
longer the price merely of liberty, but also of mere life. Washingtonians
may be expected, in the future, to be somewhat more vigilant than they have
been in times past... and interlopers may soon learn that behavior which was
tolerated before may now provoke massive responses.
Yet all of this falls under the province of the Executive Branch, which has
produced a month of mixed results, to say the least. Commonly, August is
something of a romp for the Executive Branch, which is both unrestrained,
yet also unsupported by the vacationing Legislative Branch. The Presidency
spent the month of August hardly whooping it up. Rather, it has been
hamstrung by increasing pressures within the Legislative Branch, the general
public, and in fact within the Department of Justice, itself part of the
Executive Branch. While President Clinton's policies still garner
wide support from the public, public censure of his morals has
increased as it has become more apparent that simply having an improper
relationship during working hours was the least of this sordid affair - it
has also come to light that there has been a concerted effort to suppress
factfinding, and witnesses, disinformation was generated and fielded, lies
were made under oath and in general the official level of trust in
the Office of the President has been tarnished to the point that Impeachment
is almost assured. And it is in this atmosphere that the President must
continue to "do the people's business" and do it well. Indeed, as world
financial markets plunge desperately towards a global depression probably to
be characterized by exceptional political upheaval, it will be essential to
have a firm and powerful, and ideally trustworthy, hand at the tiller of US
policy.
It otherwise has been a fairly slow month in Washington. Reform
mostly proceeds apace, and at a pace commensurate with the sultry weather:
dead slow. In some respects, it has in fact retreated.
Please see this series of
articles summarising developments in (and issues surrounding) the Office
of Information Technology. Briefly, the former Director, Michael T. Hernon
accused Sheryl Dotson, an associate and former partner of Chief Management
Officer Camille Cates Barnett, of having played fast and loose with the
sole-sourcing of a Year 2000 contract reportedly worth $50 millions. The DCFRA Control Board is said to be looking
into the matter. This was the second such matter to have been made public,
although the first was not of quite so large a magnitude of expenditures. A
third case has come to light, involving some $2000 worth of possibly
fraudulent vouchers for per-diem expenses. It would appear that in the
process of throwing out the old Barry-Cronies(tm), a new cronyism might well
be in the process of establishing itself. It will be essential to keep close
tabs on the new administration, lest it simply replace the old bunch of
scammers with a new bunch of scammers.
Also, it should be noted that the old bunch of scammers, the Barry Political
Machine, hasn't simply dried up and blown out of town. For one, that would
be dificult for them to do; by and large they're all from here and getting a
Washingtonian dislodged from Washington is as difficult as pulling the
proverbial Hen's Teeth. This is even more the case when one attempts to
dislodge a political structure that has for two decades permeated the city
from the grass-roots through the entire governmental structure. It would
probably be much more easily accomplished to move the Nation's Capital
elsewhere than to dislodge the Barry Machine. Now that Marion Barry has
declared his intention to abdicate the throne, it is no less pervasive and
entrenched. All that has happened here as regards real political change is
that the officers of the various departments no longer serve at the pleasure
of the Mayor as was formerly the case. While many of those who had been
simply slapped into place by Mayor Barry, as rewards for political services,
are no longer in place, still there remains the issue of their appointees,
who may simply have shifted their loyalties, from their direct superiors and
ultimately the Mayor, to the Machine. This would have been a definite
problem in the old days, had the DCFRA and Congress simply tossed Mayor
Barry out and let a new Mayor be elected. However, in their wisdom, they
have changed the system to make it very difficult for a Mayor, whether head
or figurehead of a political machine, to appoint whomever they wish to
reward. Yet political machines, like bureaucracies, have lifetimes greater
than those of their merely human members - and like bureaucracies, they are
dynamic (if not living) organisms which adapt to changing circumstances, and
learn to strategize, if not intelligently, at least foresightfully.
And thus it is that we see elements of the former regime
beginning to belly up to Anthony Williams. Please see this
UseNet post noting this with some over-the-top levity - comparing the
former Barry Machine to an immense and slimy amoeba of Party Machine sleaze.
District Politics allegorized as some sort of heinous blob of mindless glop
that flounders without direction yet expands without restraint as it fouls
everything it touches that it doesn't digest.
Actually, we ourselves rather like Mr Williams. We note again quite commonly
in the past, whatever was good in the world was touted by even the
Communist Party as being a product of their programs or desired by their
platforms. But being all for ending world hunger did nothing to make the
Party itself any less ultimately authoritarian and oppressive. Mr. Williams
is a good thing, but we would rather see him lose by a slim margin on a
campaign of "sweep out the old" and remain untainted by the newly resurgent
Cronies-Machine(tm), rather than see that Machine deliver for him a
landslide victory with promises of government jobs for everyone who votes
for him. Careful there, Mr. Williams, that could be the devil himself that's
sleazing up next to you.
We have long decried the sorry state of affairs in the District's programs
which ought to reach out to the most desperate and poor - and in fact, one
of Mr Williams hottest competitors, Kevin Chavous, has been making political
hay over the fact that most of these programs and agencies got an immense
budgetary axe deliverd at the hands of Mr. Williams. In defense of Mr.
Williams, while he did indeed make those cuts, what he cut were some of the
most bloated, inefficient, and cronyistic of the hideously-corrupt District
government. He has also gone on record, in early July, as supporting
expanded social services.
The District now projects a budget surplus of some $300 millions for 1998.
This is up roughly $85 millions over the original estimate. This devolves
from extremely enhanced revenues collections, much-increased tourism, and a
rebound in the real-estate markets. Also, earlier in the year, investment
managers for the city were able to take record profits. But it must be noted
that few of these gains can be expected to be recurrent, and indeed, very
few of these gains are indicative of improved management in the District,
but are rather better credited to the overall strength of the national
economy. Such improvements as shall devolve from reforms in the District,
and which might be expected to be lasting, include a new automated financial
management system which hopefully will streamline all aspects of city
finance by providing managers with reliable and instant detailed
information.
Among other information which might at last be accurately known would be the
actual extend of the District's "capital deficit". Of course, this cannot be
properly known until the rest of the District's agencies and divisions have
themselves acquired financial and administrative systems which can supply
accurate data to the central budgeting authorities. The schools alone (the
District Schools remain in administrative disarray and confusion regarding
"where the money went") might cost several billions in repairs and upgrades.
Other capital improvements in civil infrastructure will definitely cost
billions.
Experts concede that the City's public health system is at the edge of
financial collapse. Outbound DCFRA Chairman Andrew F. Brimmer notes, with an
admission of uncertainty as to the exact degree of the problem (it remains
very low-priority), that the DC Public Health Corporation is at the edge of
exceeding its spending limits, and nobody seems to be sure where to get more
money for it.
The programs which are in the worst shape are those that serve some of the
most desperate of the District's population. As poor are the general health
services provided for the general population, poorer still are those which
deal with populations generally considered "marginal", at best. This is
remarked upon by incoming DCFRA Control Board Chairman Alice M. Rivlin, who
described her experiences trying to even find the headquarters of the
Department of Human Services as "kind of surreal". Rivlin also notes that
the surplus for 1998 might amount to a sort of paperwork fiction, generated
by overcutting services which must eventually be re-funded. In this, we
completely concur.
One example is in the city's outreach to the vast population of drug users
in the city. Few cities were more scarred by the drug epidemics of 80s and
90s than was Washington DC. Even though at present Washington is no longer
the Murder Capital, still there is a vast amount of crime, and quite a bit
of it violent, which relates to drugs. Nationally there is a major shortage
of space in treatment facilities, which have been demonstrated to be of
major assistance in rehabilitiation, but in Washington the situation is
dire. Literally hundreds of people now languish behind bars waiting
placement in a rehab facility, and some of the people have been waiting for
months for such placement, having served their required-time, but held on
conditions of parole which require rehab. At the present time, less than 10
percent of the District's known substance-abusers receive any treatment
whatsoever. In a recent survey conducted by Drug Strategies, 63 percent of
District residents indicated that the city must spend much more on
rehabilitation and prevention, and rely less on criminal penalites. In 1993,
the city spend some $31 millions. This year, they spent $19.7 millions.
Also in dire condition is the city's juvenile prison, for which a
receivership is being sought. The Oak Hill Center, which provided education
for incarcerated juveniles, is characterized as being in terrible shape,
with inadequate staff and supplies. At present, the school is run by the
overburdened District Schools. It is not clear at this time what the success
rate has been, for returning students to life "outside" and it's even more
unclear what the facts are regarding prevention of recidivism. 65 percent of
District residents approved of an expansion of youth recreation programs,
which if combined with rehabiliation and job-training programs (also almost
non-existant in the District) might immensely decrease both recidivism and
new crimes.
The plight of the mentally-ill and homeless in the District is not at
present amenable to statistical analysis, as outside of the St. Elizabeth's
Hospital for the Criminally Insane (which so far as is known has not yet
been recertified as habitable) there are no real extant programs. Almost all
mental-illness resources in the District of Columbia are at present
essentially operated by private concerns. Almost all homelessness resources
are managed by such charitable groups as the Salvation Army, the Community
for Creative Non-Violence, and assorted local churches.
Unlike last year, when the District's Schools opened a month late due to an
ongoing court battle over the safety of physical facilities, this year the
District's Schools opened on time. This event was greeted with much
satisfaction by local parents. Still remaining underserved are the Special
Education students. The Special Education department has been the subject
of much debate and legal action over the last few years. Howevre, reportedly
progress continues apace in reform efforts.
The Washington Post
reports that 15 new Charter Schools, which are publicly-funded but which are
operated outside of the administrative structure of the public school
system. While Schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman struggles to rebuild
the mainstream-schools' administrative structure, the new Charter Schools
forge their own internal administrative systems. We can only hope (and only
time will tell) that these new administrations will be of higher quality
than those which have been removed from the beyond-dysfunctional public
schools. Also, only time will tell if the specialized, and often
special-interest, cirricula of the charter schools will provide a quality,
or a balanced, education for District children.
26 September 1998
In offical Washington, of course, the Federal establishment and all of the
carpetbaggers and bloodsucking hangers-on have essentially bounced from wall
to wall in a dithering that could be easily compared to the molecular-level
phenomenon of Brownian Motion. The Spin Factor here has gone so far beyond
hyperdrive that it's a wonder that the various mouthpieces and talking heads
haven't imploded entirely out of the time-space continuum with a
special-effects department sound best transliterated as a deafening 200
decibels of "WONK!" - in any case, there's no question that Federal
Washington, as far as goes anything resembling political sanity or any
commitment to addressing national or international reality, instead is
flying off where no man has gone before, at Reality Warp 9.
National partisan politics could be, at this juncture, easily be mistaken as
clearly an American attempt to astound even the French with a public display
of Surrealism, perhaps there was some announcement we missed of a citywide
public-participation Drama of the Absurd? But no, this was indeed
essentially spontaneous, a sort of Riot of Dadaism, thousands of
spin-doctors dancing on the heads of pins as it were, rhetorically hurling
at each other their peculiar and barely-dry
Cubisms of questionable legalities and effectively imprinting a
moustache on the Mona Lisa of the Office of the President, while the
Congress itself exhibits the dime-store trifle of the Starr Report as a new
classic of the avant-garde.
No better time could have been chosen for this mad costume party and
orgiastic binge-venting of partisan bile and organizational autophagy, than
at the moment when the rest of the world lies stricken in the hungerpangs of
financial calamity, wars and rumors of war advance in grim arrays of
starvation genocides and impending winterkills, while here in the US three
out of five farmers face their own calamity of either catastrophic drought
or price-collapses brought on by Canadian dumping of wheat while the
"Freedom to Farm Act" has removed almost all Federal support of American
Agriculture. Add to this the impending failure of one of the United States'
largest investment funds, and it becomes clear - in the face of impending
doom, the madness-that-is-Washington would rather gnaw itself to death than
lead a successful fight. How far we have fallen from the generation that
saved the world from Fascism and won the Cold War; the world ends not with a
bang nor with a whimper, but rather with the inane and prurient tittering of
the gibbering mad.
And now on to local politics, such as they are.
First order of business: The race for mayor in the District of Columbia
boils down to two significant contenders.
The first, and expected to win, although not without a hard-fought contest,
is Anthony A. Williams, a Democrat. Long-time readers of this page will
recall Mr. Williams as a candidate who is rather unusual on the District
political scene. Almost utterly untainted by any form of scandal, and in
fact a recent arrival to Washington itself, Mr. Williams has had a very
successful career as a troubleshooter, something of a high-caliber hired gun
with expertise in fixing broken government economies and organizations. How
effective he could be as a politician, in the classical Washigton sense,
remains to be seen. Endorsed post-election by outbound Mayor Marion Barry,
and cozied-up-to by the Democratic Machine including a lot of questionable
Barry supporters, Williams faces a daunting task and if elected he also
faces a rather astounding learning-curve regarding the particulars and
peculiarities of Washington's political establishments. It would be a
difficult task indeed to adapt this system, which has for 20 years been
imprinted indelibly with all that was Mayor Barry, and make it his own,
without it adapting him, and making him its own. Williams received some
44,000 votes.
Carol Schwartz, a Republican and long-time resident of Washington, received
(roughly) only 2500 votes, running unopposed in the Republican primaries.
She will probably receive a large percentage of the vote in predominantly
white and almost-universally upper-class Ward 1 in Northwest Washington.
She's favoring a tax-cut, which ordinarily could be seen as a bad idea, but
Washington has in recent years depended almost exclusively on income, sales
and property taxation as a revenue system, as the agencies responsible for
collection of debts and licensing fees was very badly broken. Substantial
improvements in this system, due to DCFRA Control Board oversight and
reorganization, are considered to be largely-responsible for much of the
Districts budget surplus. Some tax abatement would certainly tend to attract
businesses and their employees to the District, which over the last nine
years has seen the population decline by one-sixth, along with a concurrent
flight of business to the suburbs, away from the violence and
infrastructural decay of the District.
House of Representatives "shadow delegate" Eleanor Holmes Norton, barring an
act of God or Congress, will inevitably be returned to another term.
8 October 1998
She notes that the much-touted surplus in the budget has already been spent,
and further notes that any proposed future budgets have almost no leeway for
savings against future economic downturns.
The present surplusses in the District's budget result from "one-shot
deals", such as a lump-sum Federal payout to the District, and a significant
overhaul of the collections agencies dealing with licensing and taxes.
Further improvements in the collections agencies are unlikely to be
"significant" and in fact the increased efficiency of these agencies, with
nearly-perfect colleciton of extremely high taxes and fees, may contribute
to migration of various employers from the District, lowering overall
revenue. Also, the District has experienced a major windfall in revenue
through the nearly-unprecedented economic boom and a peak in tourism of an
order previously unseen, and which is unlikely to be sustained. The
District, however, is basing predictions of future surplusses on unrealistic
expectations of a continuation of these conditions. Also, the District at
present relies heavily on a heavily-stratified and overly complex tax system
which should be revised to be more broad-based and less stratified.
O'Cleireacain notes that taxes are already at the highest possible level and
suggests that along with a regularizing of the tax-schedules, taxes should
be cut across the board.
The District labors under many difficulties not imposed on other cities.
Not only has the District no significant manufacturing or other industrial
tax-base, fully 41 percent of the District's land is exempt from local
taxes, due to Federal possession or management of that acreage. A Federal
payment should be arranged to compensate the District for services which the
District provides to that acreage, which would tend to shore up the
District's ability to expand services for residents, which services are in
general running at a bare-bones level at present.
We note as an example of how far programs have been cut, in the last year
efforts to stick to the budget caused a $20 million decline in Medicaid
spending. We also note that black males in Washington have the second
shortest life expectancy in the US, and ranks internationally about with
sub-saharan nations such as Somalia or Ethiopia. The budget makes no
preparatory allowances for any emergencies.
Congress - which had essentially sized power from locally-elected authority
under US Constitution Article I Paragraph 17-18, and emplacing the DCFRA Control Board as an oversight and
management-reform body - is now considering restoring a greater degree of
autonomy to the District. While the DCFRA did indeed act fairly thoroughly
in implimenting management reform in some of the most slipshod of the
District Government agencies, slowing and in some cases reversing a slide
into utter financial and organizational ruin, there is a sense in Washington
that the City Manager's office is acting far too slowly in enabling a
restoration of city services. Much ballyhooed at the time of selection,
Chief Management Officer (city manager) Camille Cates Barnett has been
disappointing in terms of delivery of services to the residents of the
District. She has been criticized by mayoral-hopeful Carol Schwartz
(Republican) for her improper awarding of a high-dollar contract to former
business associate, and by mayoral-hopeful Anthony A. Williams for her slow
pace at delivering revitalized city services. Barnett is characterized by
Williams as spending too much time on developing a long-term strategy for
the District, and insufficient effort on immediate delivery of
improvements.
We believe that it would be foolish to simply rush in and throw money at the
present problems, without sufficient thought as to how to maintain any gains
in service delivery, especially in light of the O'Cleireacain brief. The
District will, in the future, probably be required to stretch the dollar
much farther than it must at present. A properly strategized system of
interlocking infrastructure and operational facilities (not to mention
resource allocation forecasting) will be essential to assure the most
efficient and responsive government for the District.
At present, the Chief Management Officer is one of the most-powerful
managers in the District, outside of the DCFRA Control Board and the
members of Congress responsible for oversight of the District.
There are many who believe that it would make some sense to increase the
power of the Mayor, ideally at some time after outbound Mayor Marion Barry
leaves the office. It was on Barry's watch that the city slid into massive
social turmoil and organizational chaos. DCFRA Control Board Chairman Alice
M. Rivlin, who is also with the Federal Reserve Board, is on record as being
supportive of moves to return the District to a self-governed mode. Also
giving some support to the idea of more mayoral power Rep. Charles H. Taylor
(NC Republican), Rep. James P. Moran Jr (Democrat, VA), and of course
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the DC non-voting congressional
representative. Others in high positions of authority over the District are
less certain that this should be done speedily, though few are interested in
congressional micromanagement of day-to-day affairs in the District,
preferring to leave that to the DCFRA Control Board and to whomever they
delgate their authority.
There is much to be said, however, in point of Mr. Williams assertions that
much more needs to be done to improve the delivery of those services which
have the greatest impact on the appearance of the city and the safety of the
residents and visitors. Mr. Williams makes one remark that we believe may
speak more truth, and a more important truth, than Mr. Williams intended.
The Washington Post
reports Mr. Williams as saying: "We need to operate at light speed... The
Anacostia Highway is a disgrace. The New York [Avenue] gateway is a
disgrace. The place is still a mess... there's an urgent need to get some
traction. who cares if we have year 2000 performance management? How about
1950s industrial process that gets the street clean?"
It's a fact that there are huge improvements to be made in the city's
streets, especially about the above-mentioned New York Avenue gateway to
Washington. Drivers coming into the city in cars rented from the
Baltimore-Washington Airport head south along the smoothly-maintained Park
Service Baltimore-Washington Parkway, riding in relative comfort, take the
exit to New York Avenue, which is where District maintenance begins, and
instantly enter a wasteland of decaying roadway that literally looks as if
it had been shelled for a few days. Truck-eating potholes loom only briefly
before eating trucks, and the entire area has the air of a war-zone having a
few minutes of quiet-time. Outside of one totally-private and entirely
self-funded developer, there seem to be no plans to improve the corridor,
other than the inevitable sprouting of fast-food franchises. This was once
the heart of such industry as Washington had. It's just been allowed to go
to seed for so long that nobody would for a moment consider opening up a
facility served by "roads" that are guaranteed to devour any of their
rolling stock within months.
Yet Mr. Williams does himself poorly by disregarding the need for addressing
not merely the year 2000, but the Year 2000, the well-known and
much-remarked impending collapse of the information infrastructure, at least
in the arenas of administration and finance. DC Chief Technology Officer
Suzanne Peck, at a recent hearing before the House Appropriations
Subcommittee for the District, said: "What we don't know is which of the
operations in our 75 agencies will fail... But what we do know is that some
will fail." Only 25 percent of the city's computer systems are known to be
Year-2000-compliant. City Manager Barnett is reportedly begging for roughly
$130 millions to address the task, which - even if the money is given
overnight - cannot possibly be completed in time, due to the scale and scope
of the problem, other than by simply replacing every single computer and all
software (and many embedded systems) not known to be immune.
Again, we reiterate our proposal to supply a base
Linux operating system and a great deal of application software, which
is definitely Year 2000-compliant.
We note in passing that as regards Mr. Williams' remarks about Year 2000
("Y2K", only 14 months away) technology compared to 1950s technology, I can only
hope that there's a lot of 1950s technology in good repair at his disposal,
because if he does wind up as the next Mayor, after about one year in
office, he's not going to have much at his disposal that works, except for
the 1950s technology. Probably a minimum of half of the equipment emplaced
in the District after about 1985 or so will simply stop working. And I won't
be in town for that lovely New Year's Eve, I'll be out in the countryside
somewhere listening to a tape of punker Wendy O. Williams (no relation)
singing "at twelve midnight, say goodbye to the world as you know it."
Mr. Williams does have a fairly good shot at being faced with this daunting
prospect - he has been endorsed by his former rival in the primaries, Kevin
P. Chavous, who had come in at second place, with 35 percent of the
Democratic party primary vote. Willaims had 50 percent. Also pledging
support are outbound Mayor Marion Barry, and Jack Evans, who placed third
with 10 percent of the primary vote.
We do note, however, that one of the tools that will most assist in any
future streamlining or revision of future DC Budgets is now in place. After
a period of testing, the District is now relying on the SOAR "System of
Accounting and Reporting" software, running on Year-2000-compliant hardware.
As other Y2K systems come online in the District, they are expected to
interact with the SOAR system, which can give up-to-the-minute spending and
budget information. It will also alert the central offices if someone tries
to exceed budget, or play fast-and-loose with the city's money.
We at Earth Operations Central have long had a beef with the District's
Office of the Medical Examiner, also known as the City Morgue. Basically,
for at least ten years, it's been a dump. During the early 1990s, evidence
came to our attention that the place simply wasn't functional. This is
further backed by reports from the DCFRA Control Board's management reform
teams, and the opinion of Medical Examiners nationwide, which professionally
have regarded the DC Morgue as a complete joke.
Aside from the fact that the Morgue had policies which probably left
something like half of all DC murders passed-off as "undetermined cause of
death" instead of being forwarded to the police for investigation (not that
that would have helped much, to be honest), there were little issues such as
refrigeration-equipment failures, at one point leaving the dead to rot in
the heat of a record-breaking Washington summer; constant turnovers of
staff; and ancient and often useless disagnostic and chemical analysis
equipment. But recently, it got even worse - due to a lack of funds and
more-revilably, a lack of caring - over a hundred unclaimed dead were simply
left stacked like so much cordwood, in the morgue's freezer. One body had
been there since 1994. The rest had piled up since 1995 when the city
abolished the burial-assistance program. The bodies will be either cremated
or interred under the management of the new ME, one Jonathan L. Arden. While
the identities and next-of-kin of most of these remain undetermined, at
least if the next-of-kin are found, they won't find their dead ones buried
in a stack of the frozen and disrespected.
We close on a mixed note - while the new Medical Examiner is much better
than his predecessors, and gives close attention to those deaths which were
formerly dismissed as "undetermined", the bad news is that he's discovered
an unusually high number of infant murders in the District.
In the cash-strapped District Schools, which are also beset by a desperate
shortage of qualified staff, over 2000 students were sent home because their
parents had failed to document the students as legitimate residents of the
District. Additionally, we can report that a long-overdue adviser has been
hired for the Schools' Special Education program. The Special-Ed program in
the District Schools has been under fire for at least a decade, and assorted
litigation and court action has made reforming the program so expensive that
other reforms are close to unaffordable. The special advisor, Frieda Lacey,
has held the position of Director of Equity Assurance and Compliance in the
neighboring Montgomery County MD schools.
Groundbreaking has occured at the site for the new Convention Center, a
wasteland of parking spaces and empty lots to the north of Mt. Vernon
Square. This has resulted in the displacement of seven trailers which
served as a Womens' Homeless Shelter. Up to 126 women can be served by
these trailers, which have been relocated to Fourth and "L" Streets, NW.
18 October 1998
It may also simply be that as the time rolls around where former illegal
aliens must either have been accepted for immigration or be deported, these
aliens have determined to not only not go without a fight, but to carry that
fight to the heartland. After all, illegal aliens in the United States far
outnumber active-service military. Add to this the number of legal or
semi-legal aliens, and we have the raw numbers for a very successful
occupation, already in place, and only now flexing their muscles and showing
their teeth.
We strongly recommend that loyalists keep an eye on foreigners, particularly
in areas which are of vital importance, and make sure you're stocked up on
supplies. I don't think these people would be carrying on so obviously
unless they were ready to make an open move.
More commentary is to come!
Also to come is a revised, revamped, and intensely updated verios of
the former Washington, the Weirdness Capital. We will continue to give DEFCON, and our own rating the WEIRDCON.
The WEIRDCON is rather like the DEFCON scale which is: defense condition
most-relaxed at a level of 5, most tense at a level of 1. The WEIRDCON
measures the condition of local weirdness. It's a pure numeric value,
weighted from a variety of factors. And what factors will those be? Get a
clue from a page that has remained relatively-unchanged for nearly three
years, when I wrote it in a fit of madness inspired by the hell I was
living. Other than the changes in the governmental structure and the
financial oversight authority, very little has changed since I wrote
this. All that has really changed at all is the some of the cops around
here seem to have gotten orders contrary to the former policy, which seemed
to have been "just let everything go to hell and pretend this isn't
happening". For a clue to the upcoming Washington, the Weirdness Capital
site, start browsing around here.
Or don't. Just see the WEIRDCON rateing
page.
25 September 1998 - On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the state of lowest
alert, DEFCON in the suburbs is roughly 2 for the most part, at least in
Montgomery County Maryland. Conditions in downtown Washington are not known
at present, but are probably in the vicinity of 2.5 (travel and official
business are okay, but otherwise why visit?). The Federal presence is in a
state of advanced dither. THREATCON is essentially at stand-down though
readiness remains high.
11 September 1998
19 August 1998
30 July 1998
19 July 1998
Please see, for a day-by-day account of those events of 1997 which set the
stage for the Year Of Change, 1998, the 1997
Washington DC, Not a Pretty Site (nor sight) Page.
Please see also the events of the first half of this year,
1998.
Washington Dies Young
The District's Poor, with highest mortality in the US, Cast Aside by
Candidates for Mayor
Recently, a national report was issued which noted that even despite the
Greater Washington Metropolitan Area's recent selection by Money Magazine as
the East Coast's "most livable city", the region remains the deadliest in
the nation. Even as the murder rate (arguably) declines, Washington has by
far the greatest number of cancer deaths, one of the highest rates of
stroke, has the highest rate of incidence of high-blood pressure in the US,
and, according to one dentist specializing in temporomandibular-joint
disorders, is the "bruxing capital of the world". There are indeed many
reasons to grind one's teeth in the region. This story, of monumental local
importance, inexplicably remained unreported by the Washington Post,
which has recently been, equally inexplicably, failing to report a great
many things. While in the rest of the civilized world, even in the former
USSR, the average age of death is on the rise, the average age of male
mortality in Washington, the District of Columbia, is sixty-two years... and
decreasing.
Some Things Just Aren't Pretty
The alleys of the District of Columbia are something of a relic of former
times. Unlike many more-modern cities, which are (outside of their downtown
cores) largely a product of the rail or automotive age, Washington dates
back to a time when the horse or carriage was the primary mode of
transportation. Depending on the quadrant or section of the city,
Washington's alleys range from little better than semi-paved carriage-wide
trails suitable at present only for 4-wheel-drive vehicles, bicycles or
foot-traffic, to a second set of streets, often connecting to interior
squares or quads. In many cases, the alleys remain essentially as they have
been since the time of the Civil War, relatively undisturbed. In other
cases, the alley quads have been developed by the neighbors into pleasant
courts in which the children may safely play, well-greened and beflowered
sanctums which bely the hustle and grim facades of the outer streets.
In the long hot summer of Washington, when the mad dogs come out to play and
only rarely does anything get done in Washington, we are at last pleased to
report the stirrings of progress beneath the surface of the muddy waters
that are midsummer Washington.
Okay, it's been nearly a month since I updated this page. I've been
slacking. This has been a relatively uneventful month, at least as regards
political or economic developments which are of a purely-local nature.
Ah, Labor Day. What can one say about Labor Day in Washington? After the
sweltering of August, there's one last holiday for the locals and then as
the tourists depart whence they came, the Federal lawmakers and regulators
return from their own tourism of the home districts. Ordinarily, they return
to a sleepy southern town still struggling in the torrid swampy mists of the
pre-fall season. However, this year, Washington did not sleep-in, as is
customary. Where ordinarily in August this city empties out, practically
becoming a ghost town when there is no Federal activity, this year there was
simply too much happening for this place to fall into the usual fitful
slumber.
While the rest of the country staggered under the implications contained in
the Starr Report, Washington itself had essentially no comment on the
hijinks revealed in the cheesey and badly-done piece of publicly-funded
smut, possibly the most-read exposition of sexual activity ever circulated.
The simple fact of the matter is that we locals have always known what goes
on in Washington. In a recent set of conversations with the local "man in
the street", Earth Operations Central was presented almost unilaterally with
a certain set of sentiments, of which we now present the general summation.
"Man, you've been up to the Hill, everybody knows what goes on up there,
probably ain't one of those Congressmen up on the Hill hasn't done the same
thing. You know what time it is, we all know what those interns are for!"
We've heard in our travels and visits to parks, bars, and alleyways, nothing
but the same thing, repeated over and over, with a total lack of anything
resembling outrage or even surprise at anything other than the fact that
this actually managed to get press. Ah, the lovely decadence that is local
Washingtoniana, so jaded that the revilable is expected and the exemplary is
seen as suspect.
Brookings Institute economist Carol O'Cleireacain has released a
brief on the District's economic future.
We have been invaded. We have observed, within recent weeks, deployment of
large numbers of foreign young men of military age and bearing, and have
also witnessed activities which appear indicative of organization of patrol
areas, including radio-dispatched patrols. This may be nothing more than a
deployment of gangsters, possibly Mara Salvatruca or 18th-Street Gangsters
from Los Angeles, or it may be something considerably more far-reaching. In
any case, we've been seeing well-organized stake-outs, radio activated
response teams, and patterns of motion on these stake-outs which indicate
that these individuals are practiced killers.
regional DEFCON is roughly 1. Washington itself is as
of this date actually rather calm if in a defensive mode. In the suburbs,
there is the feeling which varies between impending lockdown or impending
breakout - in the suburbs, war of some sort may be imminent. ThreatCON was
Alpha for some time after the 20 August 1998 airstrikes on terrorist targets
abroad. It has been observed that some populations of foreign-born have
responded to the US military action abroad by increased insularity while
others have been rather vocal in their displeasure. We believe that we will
see the advancement of campaigns among sympathizers with terrorist groups
abroad, with such campaigns including attempted identification of local
assets and facilities, complete with surveillance of suspected assets and
facilities. Local assets can expect to be the subjects of campaigns by local
sympathizers of foreign terroristic organizations, which will probably
secure the cooperation of local sympathizers by whatever means are
available. Beware! Any odd or improbable stories which are circulated in or
which originate with foreign-born communities should be considered extremely
suspect. Also any visitors to this area should be extremely alert for any
clandestine activity. The motif which will probably come to be dominant
locally will be several foreign-directed groups in competition to see who
can best manipulate formerly-unaligned potential sympathizers through
campaigns of disinformation and intimidation. See also this page for
additional clues. We personally expect to catch flak for this page and this
entry.
Regional DEFCON is now 1.1. For some reason unknown to
me, roughly one week ago something changed in the local weltgeist and
things began to "go bad". Visitors should exercise extreme caution and in
fact visiting Washington at this time may be unwise. Washington itself may
remain relatively safe and calm, if deserted, but in at least the Maryland
suburbs their is the calm that comes before a storm. I suspect this is the
same calm that was felt in Rwanda right before the genocides began.
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the lowest level, we are
now at DEFCON 2.9 in the suburbs, and in the District proper, due to the
rampage of one psychotic, and his murder of two US Capitol Police officers,
DEFCON is approximately 2. The suburban DEFCON is raised due to continued
"spies and revolutionaries run amok" activitied, observed and experienced.
Disinformation abounds in the Maryland suburbs; accept no story. Personal
observations alone should be given any credence, and ideally only where
backed by guaranteed-undoctered video or film. We have no assessment of
Northern Virginia at this time.
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the lowest level, we are now at DEFCON 3
in some areas of the suburbs, although for no explicable reason, roughly
July 14th or so something happened, and in many Montgomery County MD public
places, the level of tension seemed to rise rapidly. In those areas, DEFCON
is headed rapidly past 2 and headed for DEFCON 1.9, In most parts of
downtown, DEFCON hovers between 3 and 4, although the general public seems
to be relatively happy and there has been little earth-shaking news, in many
popular areas, there seems to be a ballooning wave of activities
best-described as "spies and revolutionaries run amok". For the Dupont
Circle/Adams-Morgan scenes, DEFCON now moves to 2 - watch your goddamned
back and have someone else watching it too.
|
As always, my thanks to the fine staff of The Washington Post for their
diligence and forthrightness in reporting District issues.
|
Please search the Post for their previous coverages of: |
| Get a District Government Executive
Position! Please apply your exemplary credentials and experience towards the reclamation of our Nation's Capital! |
I'm also starting a page for the " other real Washington" - not necessarily the good parts, but the fun parts.