DCentric

Good morning, DCentric readers! Ready for some links?

DC Cabbies Don’t Like Competition “Basically if you think it’s too easy and convenient to hail a cab in Washington, you’ll love an artificial regulatory restriction on the supply of taxis. In particular, if you think the city’s peripheral neighborhoods are too well-served by cab drivers and that we need to shift to a dynamic where you can only hail a cab in the downtown core, you’ll love this plan…If Gray is smart, he’ll recognize that this is change we don’t need. But I worry that Gray will think the lesson of his victory is that city government should always bow to interest-group pressure.” (Matthew Yglesias)

After Perry’s ‘Colored Girls,’ there’s plenty of bashing to go around “Jeepers creepers. For decades, Hollywood has been waving the same dirty drawers in the black man’s face, one black-man-bashing movie after another – including last year’s “Precious” and now Perry’s “For Colored Girls.” So where is the movie “For White Girls,” bashing white men? Stories of white men kidnapping and abusing white girls are in the news. And maybe the Lifetime channel will make one of them into a TV crime drama. But be assured that if it does, the show will feature more than enough good white men to make that one evildoer come off as an aberration.” (The Washington Post)

Encourage better conditions for restaurant workers in D.C. As restaurant goers, there are a couple simple things we can do to help support restaurant workers. First, leave your tip in cash. Since credit card tips must be processed, it can take longer for waiters to actually receive their wages, while some never receive their credit card tips at all. Restaurant employees and advocates are working to change tip processing, but for the time being the best way to ensure that your tips reach workers is to leave cash. (Greater Greater Washington)

The Twinkie Diet “But Haub didn’t just lose weight: he got healthier. During the two-month junk food feast, his bad cholesterol fell by 20% while his good cholesterol increased by the same amount. His triclycerides fell by 39%…All this led me to wonder, if he could actually get healthier in two months simply by eating less, would that be possible for people who have to shop at conveience stores? Is portion size to blame for obesity in low-income urban neighborhoods, rather than the quality of food available?” (Mother Jones)

If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of the GOP Kitchen “One of the National Republican Club of Capitol Hill’s former administrators, Kim Crawford, is already suing the private GOP outpost for treating her badly. Now you can add a pissed-off chef to the list: Jamaican-American Trevor Burt wants $2 million from the Republican hangout, according to a lawsuit filed recently. Burt, who is black, wants that money because he believes he was in line for an executive chef position, but was shoved aside because of skin color.” (Washington City Paper)

Sorry I missed your funeral, here’s a D.C. Council resolution “Mayor-elect Vince Gray took a shot at making up for missing the funeral of a fallen D.C. police officer last week by getting the D.C. Council to unanimously approve a resolution in Officer Paul Dittamo’s memory. Gray was lunching with Council Chairman-elect Kwame Brown while the District’s police department was parading through the city to memorialize and bury Dittamo on Thursday.” (Washington Examiner )