Government

All politics is local in the most political city in America.

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November 29, 2010 | 4:29 PM | By

D.C. Budget vs. The Healthy Schools Act

USDAgov

Mmm, cruciferous veggies!

Balancing the city’s budget is going to require some painful cuts in spending…but who should get less? If you’re concerned about how cuts could affect D.C.’s youngest residents, this may be of interest to you (via DC Action for Children):

A last-minute opportunity to take action for DC’s Kids! The DC Council is holding a hearing tomorrow morning on the Mayor’s gap-closing budget, and more than $4.6 million in funding for the recently passed Healthy Schools Act is on the chopping block.

The Healthy Schools Act was passed this summer to help ensure that children in DC Public Schools receive fresh, healthy meals in the classroom and comprehensive wellness services to combat childhood obesity and malnutrition. With 43 percent of District students overweight or obese, we can’t afford to squander this progress to fix a short-term budget gap.

I know that it’s almost 4:30 pm, but I just saw this and there’s still time to call your Councilmember if you are so moved. Readers: are there other, similar programs you are worried about, with regards to gap-closing?

FILED UNDER: Government, Children, Food, Money, Schools
November 18, 2010 | 3:33 PM | By

On Limiting Welfare in D.C.

janinsanfran

What am I reading? “Social supports, not time limits, will reduce poverty“, by Linda Laughlin, a family demographer at the U.S. Census Bureau. It was posted at Greater Greater Washington:

Instead of placing limits on welfare, the DC council should support the TANF Opportunities and Accountability Act of 2010 sponsored by Tommy Wells (Ward 6) and Michael Brown (at-large). The bill would invest in job training and educational programs as well as develop a better system to track welfare recipients in order to better understand when and why families enter and exit social programs.

The welfare system is far from perfect, but as the District faces continued economic turmoil brought on by the recession, this is not the time to limit access to important social safety nets. District food banks, shelters, and other social services are already strained and woefully unprepared to face coming economic hardships as the economy tries to build itself back up. Families that have not been able to leave welfare are some of the most disadvantaged families without any means of support other than social programs.

FILED UNDER: Government, City Council, Poverty
November 18, 2010 | 11:44 AM | By

D.C.’s Condom Revolution

ChepeNicoli

I’m reading NBC4, where I learned that the District Department of Health has created a special website called “Rubber Revolution” to encourage safe sex. Available in seven languages, the site prominently offers free condoms and displays condom trivia, too. That’s how I newly know that an average condom can hold four quarts of liquid.

In a city with a 3.2 percent HIV rate — higher than that of West Africa — any effort to promote safe sex is worthwhile. The “Rubber Revolution” website offers useful information on obtaining and using condoms, and on practicing safe sex in general…

By far the weirdest thing on the site is the “What Kind of Condom Are You?” quiz, which like all those loathed but pervasive Facebook quizzes, uses a few superficial questions to lead to an ostensibly whimsical result. Do you like cheeseburgers and fries? You might be a latex condom. Reality TV fans could be flavored condoms. If you like being in charge at work, you’re a magnum.

Despite this misfire, the site has its uses. Free condoms can be obtained from the city through a discreet web form — “mailed in a plain envelope” — or, if you’re less shy, you can just “call 311 and tell the customer service representative that you want to order free condoms.”

NBC’s P.J. Orvetti reports that even if you “are” a flavored or latex condom because of your quiz result, the Department will send you free Magnum-sized prophylactics, which was the only aspect of the program which gave me pause. Poorly-fitting condoms don’t stay on, and that would defeat the noble purpose of a site which is trying to protect D.C. residents from sexually-transmitted diseases.

FILED UNDER: Government, Public Health
November 8, 2010 | 2:41 PM | By

Supporters of Ali Ahmed Mohammed March, Rally at City Hall

@mjb

City Hall

After charges were dropped against the five DC9 employees who may have been involved with Ali Ahmed Mohammed’s death, TBD is reporting that over 100 of his family and friends marched to City Hall today, demanding justice:

The amount of anger and frustration among the protesters was at times overwhelming. After addressing the vocal crowd in Amharic, his native language, Mohammed’s father, Ahmed Goltchu Mohammed, became too emotional and had to be escorted away by the family’s attorney. The protest then continued for at least another hour. “We have to work with the system,” the elder Mohammed urged the crowd to remember…

At issue for those gathered was a deep concern that the case might have been dismissed for good. In a statement released Friday accompanying the court filing explaining why the charges had been dropped, however, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen made plain that the investigation is ongoing, and that charges could be re-filed after an autopsy report and any additional evidence becomes available…

While the crowd didn’t hear from any of the three politicians they had hoped to engage (Mayor Adrian Fenty, Mayor-elect Vince Gray or Council member Jim Graham), Mayor-for-life Marion Barry and Council Chairman-elect Kwame Brown addressed Mohammed’s supporters:
Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Government, Crime, DC9, Immigrants
November 5, 2010 | 3:30 PM | By

Charter Schools: Like Seeing a Dentist for a Heart Condition?

Bread for the World

Latin American Montessori Bilingual Public Charter School, D.C.

While I was reading anything and everything last night, to curate our morning link roundup, I stumbled across this:

If doctors were treated like teachers:

1. “Charter hospitals” could certify “smart people” as qualified to begin practicing medicine without any prior experience in the field if they had had “some business background.”

2. Since a “doctor” can “doctor” anything, a cardiologist would be on staff at a hospital in place of a urologist when there was a shortage of urologists. The cardiologist could “learn on the job.”…

3. Whenever a doctor gave a patient a prescription, the patient’s parents could come to the doctor’s office demanding he or she change the prescription since the parents “knew better.”

4. Because of a shortage of doctors, Mayor Bloomberg would institute a summer “crash course” in medicine for people who had no background in the field but “liked playing doctor” when they were little. Those who got through the six-week course would then be considered qualified to care for the most severely ill patients since no other doctors would want to do the job.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Education, Charter Schools, Children, Schools
November 4, 2010 | 4:36 PM | By

Mayor-Elect Gray Prioritizes Lunch over a Funeral

My twitter feed is buzzing about Mayor-Elect Vince Gray missing the funeral of a police officer who died while serving, last week. Gray was having lunch downtown:

It’s going to be a long day for Vince Gray, Mayor-Elect of the District of Columbia.  Instead of attending the funeral of Officer Paul Dittamo, who died last week in the line of duty, Gray was in the dining room at the 4th Estate, the restaurant in the National Press Club, according to the restaurant’s Twitter account.  We called The Fourth Estate, and he arrived at 1pm for a lunch with Council Chair-Elect Kwame Brown, where he still sits at press time.

According to the Post’s Mike Debonis, Fraternal Order of Police chief Kris Baumann was “apoplectic” at the no-show.  You can understand his frustration and anger, given that Baumann and the Police union were leading supporters for Gray on his campaign.

Local blog We Love DC deserves credit for spotting the restaurant’s tweet and figuring out where the Mayor-Elect was. Even outgoing Mayor Adrian Fenty, who was criticized in the past for being a no-show at high-profile funerals, managed to make an appearance and offer remarks, though he was late.

The comments under this We Love DC post highlight why this was a bad move for Gray. “Welcome back to Barryland!“, a reader said, comparing the Mayor-Elect to Mayor-for-Life, Marion Barry. Here’s another:

Is anyone at all surprised by this? Vince’s first two days post election have been a disaster. It’s not going to get any better, people.

It’s been years since I worked on a campaign, but I feel qualified enough to offer this wee bit of advice; don’t give your detractors fuel with which to flame you, if you can help it, especially when you’re trying to eliminate division and lead “one city”.

FILED UNDER: Government, 2010 Elections, Fenty, Politics, Vince Gray
November 4, 2010 | 10:14 AM | By

A Better Post about African Americans and Voting

So, I’ve been a bit sad that no one ever comments on DCentric, even though I know better than to take it personally– I’ve been blogging for eight years, and in the beginning, no one. ever. comments. But, after yesterday’s post about African Americans and voting, several of you spoke up– and one of your comments was better than my post, itself.

Making up 10% of the voting electorate can’t meant that only 10% of registered African Americans voted. ~ 90 odd million people voted, so 10% of that is approximately 9 million voting African Americans. Voter participation in this midterm election was supposed to be 42%, so if 90 million = 42%, the total registered voter pool was 214 million, and 13% of that means there are probably 27 – 28 million registered African Americans. 9 million out of 27 million is much closer to 32- 33% participation rate, not a measly 4.7%. That’s pretty comparable to the general rate of 42%, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the discrepancy is due to being disproportionately burdened by the factors that depress voting for the less than wealthy. It’s a working day, not a holiday, there’s no childcare, and polls are often hard to get to–all things we should fix. ( I got my statistics on the voting numbers from this AP article by Matthew Daly.). According to Wikipedia In 2000 there were 36 million African Americans in the united states, so assuming growth was steady, there are about 40 million *now*. Many of those people are under the age of 18, so they can’t vote, so that means over all participation was AT LEAST 25%. That strikes me as pretty respectable–especially when you consider wide spread evidence that African Americans have been disproportionately and unfairly disenfranchised b/c of the discrepancy in felony status laws regarding the use of crack vs. the use of cocaine, not to mention other less clearcut kinds of unfairness in the criminal justice system.

Moral of the story: we need more numeracy in all of our communities. Support the Algebra Project.

Uh, I’ll take quality like that over quantity, any time. Thanks for breaking it down so beautifully, Saheli.

FILED UNDER: Elections, Media, 2010 Elections, Race and Ethnicity, Social Media
November 3, 2010 | 3:45 PM | By

Why was “African Americans” a trending topic on Twitter?

http://twitter.com/bfnh

A riff on Slate's infamous "Brown Twitter Bird", inspired by their “How Black People Use Twitter”-piece.

At any point throughout the day, Twitter lists the ten most popular “topics” being discussed on its micro-blogging service. As soon as they rolled out this feature, I opted to see a more specific list of what was popular in Washington, D.C. vs. a world-wide compilation of hot topics.

This afternoon, I noticed that “African Americans” was trending. Initially, all the tweets I read regarding that topic had to do with yesterday’s election, specifically a rumor that only 4.7% of African Americans voted. There was no source for the statistic and it was on fire, showing up in hundreds of tweets, every minute. There was also some consternation being expressed at the lack of African Americans in the Senate. I chose to focus on the former issue, and collected some tweets:
Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Elections, Media, 2010 Elections, Race and Ethnicity, Social Media
November 3, 2010 | 1:46 PM | By

Another Reason Why D.C. Needs Voting Representation

kendrickmeekdotcom

Senate hopeful Kendrick Meek lost in Florida yesterday.

I hadn’t thought of this fact, until I read “America Is So Post-Racial, We Don’t Even Need Black People in Our Senate“:

…I wanted to raise awareness around the rather unbelievable fact that the next United States Senate will not have ONE African-American in its ranks.

As reported by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, all three black Senate candidates, Kendrick Meek (D-FL), Alvin Greene (D-SC) and Mike Thurmond (D-GA) have lost their bids. The only incumbent black senator, Roland Burris (D-IL), is retiring.

Only six black senators have served including Burris: three Republicans and three Democrats, Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL), Edward Brooke (R-MA), Blanche K. Bruce (R-MS), Hiram Revels (R-MS before 1874, D-MS after 1874) and current President Barack Obama (D-IL).

FILED UNDER: Elections, 2010 Elections, Representation
November 3, 2010 | 11:40 AM | By

More proof that Voting is confusing.

This is still my favorite Election Day story:

Supporters of a write-in campaign for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), aiming to make the process as simple as possible, have made ink stamps bearing Fenty’s name, which voters can take into the polls to stamp their ballots.

But it wasn’t so simple for one Fenty supporter Tuesday afternoon. That voter, at Precinct 51 at Lafayette Elementary School in the Chevy Chase neighborhood, appears to have used the stamp on the screen of an electronic machine, election officials said.

The stamps, it apparently does not go without saying, are meant to be used on paper ballots only. [wapo]

I promise, no voting machines were harmed during the making of this post. I was surprised that the ink stamps are legal– and that this isn’t the first time they’ve been pressed in to service. Supporters of Anthony Williams used them eight years ago as well!

FILED UNDER: Elections, 2010 Elections, Anthony Williams, Fenty