A Total, Unmitigated -- But Curiously Charming -- Disaster
The "Disaster" being the District of Columbia, not my website design.
If you want to talk about the District of Columbia, and I'm not saying that you do, I'm afraid we can't be discussing cute pets today. Things are getting serious this-a-way. Bring your sense of humor -- you're going to need it.
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It's a  isaster!!
The DC License Plate tag says
"Taxation without Representation"
This is a reference to the fact that, as set forth in the U.S. Constitution, D.C. residents don't have an elected Senator or a voting House member.
Ah, but we *do* have Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton. Our D.C. Rep. doesn't have the power to vote, but it's just as well since she also doesn't like to pay her taxes. She and her husband (when they were married) didn't pay federal income taxes for a spell.
So here's a question: why doesn't the D.C. license plate read . . .
"Representation without Taxation"??
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It takes 3 hours to get your car inspected every 2 years.
And of course it costs twice as much as anywhere else to inspect it.
They don't make font size large enough to tell you how I really feel about that! |
It's a disaster!! |
| The cronies of our mayors have corny nicknames like "Roach." |
| Everyone knows about Mayor Barry. But check out our current mayor: he had to run as a write-in candidate because the people he had collect signatures committed massive fraud. |
| Why, our mayor probably couldn't even get on the California governor's ballot! |
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I am NOT making this up. |
| There are routinely huge manhole cover "explosions" in the city that can knock out power to an entire block. PEPCO, the local utility, is very tied in with city hall. It terms these manhole cover explosions as "garden variety" and no one seems shocked or alarmed. |
| The latest manhole cover explosion -- involving the lid popping high into the air, power out for a whole block, flames, smoke, the whole nine yards -- with receive only passing mention. |
| Of course, whenever someone actually does complain in this one-party town loudly enough, there's a press release issued by a politician calling for an investigation of this deplorable, intolerable situation and the city government sighs a collective sigh of relief that the situation is being investigated. |
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Speaking of sewers, What an example our elected leaders set too: recently, a Councilwoman argued against tort reform in D.C. on the grounds that it would deprive D.C. citizens from the hope of hitting the "jackpot" on a tort. Openly discussing the court system as the equivalent of a lottery!
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Our Police Chief redefines crimes to cook the books on crimes statistics and claims that identity theft isn't a crime.
Even after all the cheating on crime stats, the murder rate in DC is still higher than in Baghdad.
When that little fact hit the news, DC leaders complained. Not that it was untrue, mind you. But they didn't want it to be talked about: it might discourage tourism. A huge debate ensued about whether it was bigger in absolute numbers (yes) or per capita (that too).
Like it matters.
What would our tourist slogan be? "Come to D.C.: our murder rate may be higher than Baghdad per capita, but it's a much smaller number in absolute terms!" Ready to pack your bags?
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The income tax rate for the city is higher than most states.
People will lawfully tow your car just to collect the towing fee.
They recently tried to increase property tax assessments by 100 percent in some parts of the city.
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AHEM. Well, that's not the whole story.
There are really 2 Washington stories: the historical and tourist Washington of tourists, and the community of Washington. They don't always get along any more than the colors on this page, but here they are.
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HISTORICAL WASHINGTON
The US Congress met in many cities before we were as a nation ready to commit to a permanent seat of government. The Potomac was a natural midpoint between north and south, and a location near George Washington’s Mount Vernon home was an extra benefit.
By 1791, people would refer to "the city of Washington" – meaning the city near George Washington’s home – and the name stuck. Maryland and Virginia agreed to cede land to create the District of Columbia. DC is named for Christopher Columbus! It’s a town of about 500,000 – less each census – in an area about ten miles square. The survey work for the city was done by an African American mathematician, Benjamin Banneker: a high school carrying his name is one of the view public schools to maintain rigorous academic standards in modern times.
The city itself was designed by a French engineer, Pierre Charles L'Enfant, and then after they fired him, Banneker continued to carry out L’Enfant’s plan: an elegant city, with a park (Rock Creek Park, where they found Chandra Levy’s body) and wide thoroughfares. The layout of the city is beautiful. Confusing, but beautiful. Charles Dickens visited and complained that it was a city of "Magnificant Distances." There were too many "spacious avenues that begin in nothing and lead nowhere; streets, milelong, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants; public buildings that need but a public."
DC in the early days had the look and feel of a ghost town. (I’m sure many here wish it still did!) Work started on the ornate Capitol in 1793, but it was barely complete when British troops torched it in the War of 1812. This was a blow to the city, which was – famously – located in a swamp to begin with. DC fell on hard times. Congress entertained a vote to abandon the capitol, and the proposition lost by only nine votes!!
The Civil War brought to Washington armies, hospital, wounded, chaos, and expense. Some Washingtonians asked if the U.S. Capitol’s new dome should perhaps not be built. But the beautiful gold dome was built in those trying times. President Lincoln explained, "If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on." In the war's aftermath, the Great Emancipator was assassinated in Ford's Theater (a memorial flag remains draped over the theater box shrine today).
The Civil War had a dramatic effect on DC’s future. The role of the US capital changed from state-led administration to centralized leadership.
The town's ailing infrastructure was overhauled in the 1870s by territorial governor Alexander "Boss" Shepherd, whose extravagant use of federal funds and penchant for steamrolling anything in his way led to a crackdown by Congress that robbed DC of self-government for another 100 years. For the citizenry, it was a high price to pay for a city beginning to look like it might fulfill L'Enfant's original vision of a world-class capital.
Tourists are now a big part of DC’s economy. A beautification plan at the turn of the 20th century added most of the landscaping, parks, and monuments for which Washington is now well known. One U.S. President called D.C. "a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.".
The city's intense and divisive political climate is downright romantic to political activists. Spectacular free art is visible at every turn. The Smithsonian. The Washington Monument. The Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. It's all very beautiful.
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THE COMMUNITY OF WASHINGTON
As you all know, Washington has too much crime, poverty, and racial segregation.
But what you perhaps don’t know is that it also has some of the nicest long-time residents around. Not the newly planted K-Street lawyers. But the good honest hardworking, largely middle class folk of the District of Columbia – largely African American – go to church in record numbers. Many in the community came from families that migrated north after the Civil War and tried to make a go of life in DC and all that it might represent. Sunday morning in the city, many many of the good people of this city, the local locals, are in church.
De facto racial segregation in housing and education continue to harm the city. Many white liberals just assume that blacks want public housing and looser enforcement of the city’s drug laws. In fact, if they would spend more time meeting and talking to the good citizens of this city, they would realize that many in the "black community" – as it’s often called in this city of so few integrated neighborhoods – want more and stricter police patrols and are hungrily craving a better chance for their children through President Bush’s proposed voucher system for D.C. public school students.
If that great Washingtonian, Frederick Douglass, were alive today and asked to identify the city’s most pressing civil rights issue, it would surely be the state of the public schools – not the statehood issue that the one-party politicians of this city of 88 percent Democrats keep thrusting upon the populace.
If I had to pick on person who was a quintessential Washingtonian, it wouldn’t be one of these Presidents who come and go. It would be Frederick Douglas. He was a great writer, an eloquent orator, a born slave who secured his freedom and lived not only to see slavery become a thing of a past but also witnessed his elevation the post of U.S. Marshal for DC with a big house on the hill.
There is much for the black community within DC to be proud of. Before the Harlem Renaissance, Duke Ellington's Washington was from 1900 to 1920, this country's largest African American community. As a good walk-through tour of this era of D.C. explains, I think accurately: It developed a prosperous black middle class which forged a strong society of churches, newspapers, businesses and civic institutions. Its businesses were black owned and run; its buildings, designed, built and financed by blacks; its entertainment, by and for African Americans. This was a proud and elegant community that flourished despite, or perhaps even because, of Jim Crow, the oppressive segregation that forced blacks to create their own separate destiny. Educated blacks sought shelter from Jim Crow in black high-society during this era. The Lincoln Theatre and other great cultural centers were established in DC’s Shaw neighborhood. Unfortunately, after Martin Luther King’s assassination, the Shaw riots destroyed much of the neighborhood. It still has not fully recovered, but it is on the way back.
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9-11
On September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked Washington, flying a hijacked United Airlines aircraft into the Pentagon, causing significant damage and killing all aboard the plane. A further plane crash-landed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, it too intended to attack somewhere in Washington. On the same day two hijacked planes destroyed New York's twin towers, killing thousands of people. The terrorist attacks were the worst-ever on US soil. You could smell the smoke everywhere in the city. Jet fighters took to the air to patrol Washington for months afterward.
People in the nation think of the attack on the Pentagon as a personal attack on the nation and they feel it personally and they should. But for those who live in DC, it was a particularly personal time, because nearly everyone at least knew someone who knew someone who was on that plane.
In 2003, despite security remaining high around Washington's key monuments, it is clear that the city has gone a long way towards repairing both the Pentagon and its damaged psyche, with visitors returning and hotels refilling. The DC government, along with the American Red Cross, is forming a D.C. Citizens Corp to establish a better community-based response to any future terrorist attack.
The city has its flaws. It can be discordant. It can be a disaster. Laughing at the ones you can laugh about is a proven survival technique hereabouts.
Fact is, you prayed for us on 9-11. And we prayed for you. And soon a Pentagon Memorial will be built to remember the victims and to remember why they died: because they were free.
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So that's D.C. Don't let us *ever* become a state until we get our act together. Still and all, the people in this city have kids whom they want to be educated in a safe neighborhood, just like anywhere else. Let the racism of low expectations die and let the D.C. public school voucher program begin.
More freedom, that's all D.C. needs.
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