DCentric

Good morning, DCentric readers! Ready for some links?

Cutting D.C.’s child-care subsidy isn’t the way to fix the city’s budget gap “For the District’s single working moms, good child care is what makes their world possible. They can work, bills get paid, life proceeds. Take affordable day care away, and it all collapses like a cheap gingerbread house. Yet this is exactly what the D.C. Council is thinking of doing to help close a $188 million budget gap, whittling away at an already shrunken program that subsidizes care for about 12,000 children of working parents. The people who would suffer are those doing everything right. They are the last ones who should be targeted in a frenetic budget-cutting spree.” (The Washington Post)

Food Bank Sees Small Signs Of Turning Economy “But there are small signs that the hardest times may be passing. Executive Director Charlie Meng says though the center serves about 10 new families each month, that’s better than the 100 new families applying for assistance each month one year ago. And as volunteers sort through cans of donated food, they’re seeing expiration dates that haven’t passed. “It’s a sign that people are willing to spend money because all of it is newly bought. So they’ve gone to the store to buy specifically for AFAC,” Meng says.” (wamu.org)

The Unlicensed Meat Salesman and The Culture Of Fear “The District’s neighborhood listservs provide one particularly valuable service to jittery residents: they’re searchable repositories of suspicious activity. Shady newspaper salespeople, magazine peddlers, people dressed as utility technicians — just a sample of the alleged scam artists who prowl the city’s residential streets in search of their next victim. Recently though, we’ve noticed another class of accused scammer popping up on the listservs: the guy who sells meat out of a van — who some residents aren’t just afraid will swindle their money, but perhaps also their digestive health.” (DCist)

Junk Food Purveyors Pop Up Around Capitol Hill – NYTimes.com “The new places around the Capitol also represent, if not an emergent dining scene, at least a steadily improving one in a city long derided for substandard eating. A number of New York chefs have decamped to the area, realizing that a permanent industry means an economy that has fewer dents than that of many other big cities…“It’s true that D.C. is now a city you have to be in,” said Jimmy Haber…“You’ve heard that government is not getting any smaller, and big government certainly helps business.” Mr. Haber said that his company’s BLT Steak and Casa Nonna restaurants here perform almost as well as their counterparts in New York.” (The New York Times)

Caught On Camera: Teens Harass Metro Passengers One of the victims is Elizabeth Jia, a multimedia journalist at 9NEWS NOW. Jia was on her way to Union Station when she says five teenage girls got on. Jia used her cell phone to record video of the girls harassing a female Metro rider. “They started laughing seeing that the girl physically removed herself,” Jia said. When the teenager sitting next to Jia saw her phone– Jia says she took it. (WUSA Washington, DC)

Dr. Gridlock – D.C. transportation after Gabe Klein “…I think he’ll wind up being remembered as a administrator who pushed the District toward the mainstream of urban transportation policy. There’s nothing radical in the bike lanes program, or the streetcar program or the street-parking program, or the pedestrian safety program. What looked to us here like cutting-edge programs would seem like catch-up to people in other big cities” (voices.washingtonpost.com)

Beloved teacher suffered miscarriage breaking up classroom fight when student elbowed her in stomach “The teacher, who was four months pregnant, was teaching her fifth period Spanish class at Exploration Academy in the Claremont section of the Bronx when the assault occurred. A student arrived five minutes late, walked up to another student who was already seated and told him to get out of his desk, students said. When the seated student refused, the conflict escalated and the teacher tried to intervene. She was accidentally elbowed in the stomach and fell to the ground, crying. “I can’t believe it,” said Amaury Lopez, 17, a student at the school. “I can’t believe she lost her child over a fight over a chair.” (New York Daily News)