This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: DC Government

  • Bob Herbert; the ugliest side of racebaiting

    You’ve probably already read the drivel that Bob Herbert stole his weekly check with this week called The Ugly Side of the GOP. He begins his ignorant, valueless rant yapping about giving a Congressional vote to the District of Columbia;

    Enough is enough. Last week the Republicans showed once again just how anti-black their party really is.

    The Republicans are anti-black because they won’t give the District of Columbia a Congressional vote. The District is 65% black – that means there’s 175,000 whites and hispanics in the city that don’t gt a Congressional vote either. Does racist Herbert say a word about that? Nope, the Republicans didn’t change the law because they want to disenfranchise Blacks – most of those disenfranchised moved from a place where they had a Congressional vote to the District where they knew they wouldn’t have a Congressional vote.

    By moving 5 miles in any direction, a resident of the District could get a Congressional vote if it meant that much to them. So the residents of the District of Columbia choose to not have a Congressional vote.

    The only people who need a Congressional vote for the District are the politicians (most of whom are Black – so that must be the people Herbert is concerned about) who want to rape the American taxpayers. That’s the truth – the politicians in the District whip the masses into a frenzy with intellectually bankrupt platitudes to enrich themselves.

    I suppose Herbert blames the Republicans for Katrina, too, instead of the Democrat governor and mayor (a Black) who stood at a distance (in his comfy hotel room in Baton Rouge) and left the people of New Orleans to their fate despite pleas from the Republicans to evacuate the city.

    Someone should remind Herbert that it was a Republican Senate and President that enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1957 that formed the Civil Rights Commission. It was also Republicans that passed President Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964 despite Democrat opposition.

    He also complains about “states’ rights” – that Ronald Reagan announced he was for states’ rights. I remind Herbert, despite his misuse of the word, the Constitution guarentees states’ rights in the 10th Amendment. Herbert should read it sometimes.

    He goes on (and on and on…);

    At the same time that the Republicans were killing Congressional representation for D.C. residents, the major G.O.P. candidates for president were offering a collective slap in the face to black voters nationally by refusing to participate in a long-scheduled, nationally televised debate focusing on issues important to minorities.

    Why should they waste their time addressing issues that Democrats (like Grand Kleagle Robert Byrd) have been paying lipservice to for decades. That’s all racebaiting thugs like Herbert care about – they don’t want solutions to problems, they just want someone to feel sorry for them and someone to tell them how helpless they are, and throw money at them. The Democrats do that well – other people’s money.

    Blacks have disenfranchised themselves – they bought into the Democrat rhetoric and they follow Democrats like sheep – for scraps. And then they demonize Blacks who choose to become Republicans. The Democrats take them for granted and Republicans just don’t work for their vote – because it’s a lost cause.

    And clowns like Herbert, who are in a position to change the way Blacks are treated in the political system, instead take the easy route and run to “Massa” and point out the fieldhands that are sneaking off the plantation.

  • DC vote advocates pressure Senate

    The Washington Post reports in “11th Hour Pressure Applied on DC Vote” that DC advocates are putting pressure on the Senate to pass a measure to allow consideration for a vote giving DC a voting member of Congress;

    Facing a critical Senate vote today, supporters and opponents of the D.C. voting rights bill made impassioned speeches and lobbied on Capitol Hill in a last-minute push on the District’s efforts to get its first full member of Congress.

    The motion coming up on the Senate floor would merely clear the way for lawmakers to consider the bill. But if supporters fail to get the necessary 60 votes, the legislation will probably be doomed for this year, according to senators and staff.
     
    Both sides expect a close vote. So, in an eleventh-hour offensive yesterday, advocacy groups launched a nationwide call-in campaign to senators’ offices. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), meanwhile, joined the District’s nonvoting House delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), at a rally in which they recalled the Senate’s notorious history of filibustering civil rights legislation.

    “Not since segregation has the Senate blocked a voting rights bill. And this is a voting rights bill,” Fenty declared outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Behind him, about 60 activists waved signs reading “I Demand the Vote.”

    Now, personally, I think everyone should have representation in Congress – every single human. If residents of DC are really so upset that they don’t have a voting representative, they should move – it’s only ten miles from Maryland to Virginia across the District, so no DC resident is moving too far to get the vote they covet, if they really wanted to vote.

    It’s not like Congress just up and changed the rules recently – it’s always been like that. There’s no one in DC who had their voting rights taken away – well, except maybe Eleanor Holmes Norton – she might have been living here when the Constitution was written.

    Why am I against DC having a voting member in Congress? Well, DC voters are morons, for one thing. They’ve elected a cracksmoking whoremonger to the Mayor’s Office after he was released from prison and then voted for him to sit on the City Council while he’s being investigated for tax evasion. When the District elected a straw Senator a few years ago, who’d they elect? Jesse Jackson, an Illinois resident who has never claimed residence in the District.

    The previous mayor was found to have hired people who falsified his filing documents for reelection and was denied entry into the election on the Democrat ticket – he ran as an independent and won anyway – despite his record of surrounding himself with known criminals and incompetent numbskulls.

    My opinion has nothing to do with the District’s political leanings – Utah would balance that out -it has to do with their electoral boobery. Why should the rest of the country suffer DC’s fools gladly. Aren’t Jim Moran and Chris Van Hollen enough?

  • DC Mayor Fenty on gun rights

    I’ve seen some stupid poltical remarks before, but today’s opinion piece in the Washington Post by DC’s new mayor, Adrian Fenty, is probably the most juvenile and faulty writings of any politician – ever. Aside from mistating constitutional precedence, he also mistates the purpose of the US Constitution;

    On a related note, the courts also repeatedly recognized that the Second Amendment is meant to constrain the federal government alone. Another longstanding Supreme Court precedent, Presser v. Illinois, establishes establishes that the Second Amendment simply does not apply to state regulation of gun possession and use. The District should have authority just like that of the states, if for no other reason than to avoid the absurd result that the nation’s capital alone would lack the ability to take the steps the local government believes are needed to keep its residents safe.

    On it’s face, it sounds almost reasonable – except that I wonder how Mayor Fenty would feel if the same principle were applied to the abortion issue. Since the Constitution only applies to restraining the Federal Government, how about we let the several States decide whether they want to ban abortions or not – without interference from Federal courts.

    Or, we could just let the States decide whether or not they want to enforce the 14th Amendment, or, Hell, they can just decide whether they want to fiddle with the First Amendment, for Pete’s sake.

    The handgun ban has saved countless lives, but this fundamental part of the District’s public safety laws will be no more if the Supreme Court does not review and overturn this year’s decision by the D.C. Circuit.

    I’d give a coupla bucks to see how the Hell Fenty can make such an irresponsible statement. Prove to me that the handgun ban has saved lives. There have been 126 homocides in the District this year as of August 31st  (there were four more over the weekend). And the DC cops, according their own statistics at the above link, after thirty years of a handgun ban, still took 1519 guns off the street THIS YEAR ALONE. Your ban isn’t working and only criminals have guns – law-abiding citizens are undefended. Even long-gun ownership is so restrictive that personal protection is impossible. Why do you think the city with the most restrictive handgun laws in the country has the highest murder rate? Stevie Wonder could see the answer from space - the handgun ban isn’t  disarming criminals.

    So, Mayor Fenty, it appears that you’re on the side of criminals in this. And for all of the wrong reasons.

  • Census data shockah; DC has lots of poor people!

    Life in this intellectually vacant city, Washington, DC, isn’t made easier by idiot social scientists. In today’s Washington Examiner, the District’s government announced that *shockah!* there’s a disparity in incomes in the District;

    Nearly 80 percent of the 108,100 District residents who live below the poverty line are black, according to the figures for 2006 released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

    The data show the District has the second-highest poverty rate in the country at 20 percent, far above the national poverty rate of 12.3 percent. It trails only Mississippi, where 21 percent of residents are below the poverty level.

    In a city where Blacks are nearly 70% of the population, why is anyone surprised that 80% of any particular data grouping is Black? And why are 20% of the District’s population below the poverty line? Because the District can’t provide basic services like snow removal, downed-tree removal and street repair.

    The drainage systems explode, the water is only barely potable, the streets are strewn with trash and panhandling hobos, the police can’t seem to find the door handles of their cars until shift changes, the council passes laws they don’t expect to be enforced and pass out money hand-over-fist to any “research” organization that asks. The schools are beyond repair as well as the education system itself. City officials are corrupt and inept.

    Why would anyone with any money stay in the District? The people with the means to leave (except the HillaryClintonJohnEdwardsJohnKerry-types who all have mansions in the Georgetown and Southwest area) leave. The people without the means to leave stay for the handouts. The most amazing part of the Examiner article;

    If recent trends continue, this disparity will continue to grow. Median income for whites has grown by 10 percent since 2004, while black income growth has been stagnant.

    Wait for the money shot;

    “It certainly suggests that the city needs to be going the extra mile to reach out to [poor black] residents,” Lazere said.

    350,000 people in this city of a half-million residents are Black. The city government is run largely by Blacks - nearly half of the City Council is Black. All are supposedly residents of DC. How are they just now noticing this?

    Outside Washington, median incomes were among the highest in the country, while poverty rates were well below the national average.

    Wonder why? Federal employees don’t want to expose themselves and their families to dangerous and poor living conditions. About 500,000 people come to work in the District everyday and then leave before nightfall. Most of the crimes in DC happen after nightfall. I don’t need census data to tell me why.

    How is this a shocking revelation worthy of a headline? Who’s really to blame about the poverty here? The voters – they keep sending the same incompetent boobs year-after-year (a fine example), for superficial reasons, to run the government into the ground and drive away more income-producing residents, which lowers the tax base and makes the government even more incompetent, which drives the tax basis down…. 

    Stevie Wonder could see it from space f’pete’s sake.

  • Child education is a nasty business

    I swear, it’s rare when get this mad. I just got done reading this story from the Washington Post about a low-life, scum sucking, pig kisser who bilked DC taxpayers (read that; all US taxpayers) out of $647,000 in just three years;

    Belton, 61, admitted to U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina that she steered about $446,000 in seven no-bid contracts to friends and a cousin and stole $203,000 by paying school funds to a fictitious company she controlled. At the same time, she received $180,000 in illegal payments and kickbacks from friends she helped with school business. The crimes took place from March 2003 to May 2006, prosecutors said.

    Where does DC find these “public servants”? We all know the story about Marion Berry – the crack smoking whore-monger who has dodged jail for tax evasion for the last two years.

    Well, a couple of years ago, they had a fire chief whom they hired while he was being investigated in Augusta, Georgia for skimming funds – and surprise! – funds were missing when DC government finally decided to let him go.

    The manager of the teachers’ pension fund got caught stealing about a million bucks to buy herself a new car, fur coats, and such – and she gave some of the money to friends and her fricken chauffeur. See, that’s what happens when you give a public employee a fricken chauffeur.

    One of the charter school principals they hired turns out to be a sex offender.

    The list goes on. It seems that every week I get to read about how some public employee in the District is caught with his/her hand in the till. And they get a little handslap and sent to the corner to think about what they’ve done.

    What fate awaits Brenda Belton, thieving bitch? She gets a whooping 3 years in jail;

    During sentencing in November, Belton will face a likely term of 30 to 37 months in prison for theft and tax evasion charges. She has agreed to pay restitution of $383,000, most of which will go back to the school system.

    See, that’s why they keep being criminals. She doesn’t have to pay the District all of the money she cost them, or even all of the money she bilked – just the portion that she kept. I call bullshit! If I’d robbed a damn bank without a gun, I’d get at least 10 years – how is this different from robbing a bank?

    And what the Hell is this bullshit about “most of [the money] will go back to the school system”. Where else is that money going? Lemme guess – to pay lawyers and the court system. Every damn penny should go back to the schools. If the lawyers and judges want some damn money, get it from the bitch who robbed the taxpayers, ya fricken blood sucking leaches. 

    I swear, it’s like living in a third world country.

  • You can lead a DC child to free breakfast…

    Apparently, the District of Columbia can’t force the poorer children of the city to eat their breakfast, according to the Washington Examiner;

    The District of Columbia’s public schools reach fewer than half of low-income students who qualify for free breakfast, despite a “universal” program aimed at feeding all eligible children, according to a report released Tuesday.

    […]

    Alternative methods include serving breakfast in classrooms rather than in a cafeteria or “grab and go” plans in which students can take food items from carts or the cafeteria with them to the classroom. Studies have found that children who eat breakfast fare better on standardized tests.

    Well, you can also hook ’em up to a feeding tube or start giving them breakfast enemas, or intravenous feedings. or you can just cancel the damn program and make their parents feed them before they leave the damn house and stop spending my damn tax money on useless crap. For pete’s sake…

  • DC Schools should make everyone mad

    Well, here we are weeks from another school year beginning, and the Washington Post reports that, just like this time every year, DC schools – which get about 20% of their funding from federal revenues; re:your tax receipts – aren’t ready to teach students;

    One month before school starts, District officials said yesterday that half of D.C. public schools do not have all their required textbooks and half of the school buildings will not have any air conditioning on the first day of school — conditions as traditional in the city as back-to-school shopping for a new box of crayons.

    Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said an investigation found that some schools received incorrect book shipments and others have not received any books.

    An investigation? You need an investigation to know you received the wrong (or no) textbooks? I’ll bet you needed some rocket scientist to investigate, too.

    At a news conference yesterday, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) promised that this would be the last year of such textbook debacles and said the city is updating school heating and air-conditioning systems.

    Different mayor, same old story. Fenty took control of the DC school system last Spring promising this stuff would come to an end. Yet, here we are.

    During the meeting with reporters, beads of sweat formed on Fenty’s head and dripped onto his suit jacket as he stood in a Head Start classroom at Davis Elementary School in Southeast Washington. The room, where a wad of bright pink bubble gum decorated a ceiling covered by peeling paint, was one of five classrooms with air conditioning out of 40 in the 64-year-old building, Principal Joyce Thompson said.

    So what has the school district been doing all summer?

    The District spends about $12,000 per student (about 1/4 is from federal spending). Hell, for that much money, they should just forego educating kids and just start paying them $5.77/hour to sit at home and watch TV ($12,000 works out to $5.77/hour for 52 weeks and a 40 hour work week).

    Since truancy is a big problem in DC schools (25% of students are absent without an excuse 20 days or more a year) you might as well just pay them to stay home. Apparently, the schools don’t care about the students, the parents don’t care, the city doesn’t care. Maybe it’s time for the American taxpayer to demand accountability from the District since it’s us throwing our money down a black hole that turns out illiterate pinheads at $144,000 a pop.

    We’d better do something quick, the Washington Examiner says that $200 million bucks isn’t enough to rebuild the school system’s infrastructure, according to Fenty – that’s another $3100/student.

    David Lipscomb at the Washington Times reports that things are worse than in a third world country;

    The problem was discovered last week and probably will not be fixed before the start of school on Aug. 27, said Miss Rhee, adding that the extent of the mistakes will be known within a week.

    Getting textbooks on time has historically been a problem in the District, one which Miss Rhee’s predecessor, Superintendent Clifford B. Janey, tried to prevent by installing a $3 million automated validation system.

    Additionally, Miss Rhee has issued a hiring freeze in the school system’s central office while the office is “streamlined.” Miss Rhee cited the need to outline job responsibilities after several employees could not tell her their job descriptions.

    “The vast majority of answers I got was ‘I do whatever Mr. So-and-so tells me to do,’ ” Miss Rhee said. “There’s not a clear sense of the individual personal responsibilities for ensuring specific outcomes.”

    $3 million for a tracking system that doesn’t track – school district employees that don’t know their job’s description. Yeah, I know alot of you just shrigged and said to yourselves, “Well, that’s government.” It’s time we stopped shrugging and making excuses and started storming the schools.

    The problems of this country stem from our poor and degraded schools – and the administrators who syphon every penny for more administration instead of spending money on education. I’ll bet you cash money that Clifford Janey wouldn’t spend three million bucks to organize his own home – yet, instead of making people do their jobs, he bought a machine and a system that’s apparently as useless as the people he hired.

    That’s the problem – Americans used to resist technology as a solution to every problem. Now we’re just too lazy to resist – and we blame technology for our own sloth and incompetence. Maybe if we made people earn their damn salaries instead of letting them making lame excuses about damned technology.

  • Stunning strategy change; DC cops arrest criminals (Updated)

    The Washington Post announced today that over this last weekend, DC Metro police changed their tactics and began arresting criminals;

    The District’s stepped-up campaign to fight crime brought 492 arrests in its first two days, including 51 for felonies, a 70 percent increase over the previous weekend that has left city leaders hopeful about the new strategy.

    […]

    Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced last week that all of the force’s 3,300 sworn officers would work longer hours this weekend to give the summer crime-fighting program a jump-start. The plan, which cost $1.3 million in overtime pay, was intended to help prevent an increase in homicides, robberies, car thefts and gang activity that typically comes in the summer.

    It’s not all good news, though. They aren’t changing their strategy so much that they’ll stop relying on useless surveillance cameras;

    Police are also expanding their network of neighborhood surveillance cameras, adding five last week and 24 by the end of June, for a total of 72 across the city.

    Surveillance cameras haven’t done a thing except push criminals into areas that aren’t surveilled – or into Prince Georges County, Maryland.

    Cops got so excited that they could actually investigate crimes and catch criminals, they started running into each other;

     A police chase after a murder suspect ended in a violent crash Sunday. Two DC Police cruisers slammed into each, other injuring the officers inside, all while horrified residents looked on at the intersection of 13th and K Streets in southeast.

    And of course the City Council is on board…well…sort of;

    “I’m assuming all are valid arrests,” said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary. “Some neighborhoods are enormously frustrated with ongoing criminal activity. If police are cracking down, I’m sure residents are pleased to be feeling a bit safer.”

    Council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large) agreed that the more aggressive tactics could be a good start to tamping down crime. “If these arrests are warranted, I’m happy it happened and they’re getting people off the streets,” he said.

    But councilmember Brown had a proviso;

    “The questions become, ‘How do you take those arrests and deal with them on the front end and back end?’ ” Brown said. “People arrested — fine. But at the same time, we need to focus why they are out there getting arrested in the first place.”

    Um, probably because they’re criminals, Council Member. I know you see it as an opening for convincing the already over-taxed, working residents of DC that you need to increase their taxes so you can “solve” poverty in the District, or you can blame over-crowded classrooms or some other equally vacuous platitude about how tax money can prevent crime. The Council and Mayor’s office have consistently prevented police from doing their jobs, and call for half-measures that mask their incompetence and disregard for the safety of law-abiding citizens.

    Like those idiot “Police Emergencies” that old Ramsey called last year that were nothing more than police doing their jobs for a few weeks and getting overtime pay for doing it. I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the only one who could see through that ploy.

    There’s no revenue in catching criminals. They’d rather have cops writing tickets and putting boots on car wheels. That brings in cash. They think government is their own little business which doesn’t have it’s excesses and abuses regulated. The City Council is just too secure in their jobs – they know the voters will vote them back into office not because of what they’ve done, but because of what they are. Voters don’t hold the City Council responsible for their incompetence, because City Council blames everything on Congress and the President – and because the citizens are willfully blind and ignorant, they throw their votes away on lazy and incompetent government.

    As soon as arrests become politically unpopular, the City Council will jump back off board, I’m sure. 500 arrests means 1 in 1000 residents of DC were arrested this weekend (if they were indeed all DC residents). I expect to see angry parents and spouses on TV soon complaining that their criminal relatives were framed by over-zealous cops and the cops will go back to solving crimes at the drive-through window of the Popeye’s chicken joints.

    Not related to the sweep, but a trial that begins tomorrow for – guess who;

    DC Council member Marion Barry is expected to be in court Tuesday to face several traffic charges stemming from traffic stops that occurred last year in the District.

    In September, Barry was stopped by Secret Service officers near the White House after he allegedly ran a red light. Police also said he smelled of alcohol.

    Barry was charged with driving under the influence after refusing to take a urine test. A breath test came in below the legal limit.

    In December, Barry was stopped by US Park Police in Southeast for driving too slowly. He was charged with misuse of temporary tags and operating an unregistered vehicle.

    Barry insists the charges are unfounded.

     

    See, there’s the damn problem. This criminal is a council member, too. He’s delinquent on his taxes for seven years (and the federal prosecutors can’t force him to pay, because the judge won’t force him) and he’s a menace to society and the entire city.

    And do you know how hard it was to find links to these stories about Barry? I guess the local media is burying the criminal behavior of it’s most [in]famous resident.

    I don’t want anyone to get me wrong. I don’t blame the DC Metro Police for their inability to stop criminals and arrest criminals and jail criminals. I completely blame the local government. I know and I’ve met great dedicated cops on the Metro DC police force (there are some useless turds, too – they know who they are) – but the politicians won’t let them do their jobs the way they should because the criminals run the media like sock puppets and the media run the politicians like sock puppets. So, politicians; guess who’s hand is really up your…um…sock.

    UPDATE: The Washington Times reports this morning that;

    The Metropolitan Police Department made more than 650 arrests last weekend as part of a kickoff to the District’s summer anti-crime initiative, Chief Cathy L. Lanier said yesterday.
        “I think overall we hit our goal of what the initiative was,” Chief Lanier said during a press conference announcing the arrest totals. Now, we “take those examples and then determine how we turn that around, listen to what people have said to us.”
        The 650 arrests were made from 6 a.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Sunday. That was more than twice the average number made during the previous five weekends, police said, and the arrests also resulted in a drop of about 10 percent in serious crime compared with the previous weekends.
        The adult arrests included 109 on narcotics charges, 11 for aggravated assaults, 14 for unauthorized use of a vehicle, nine on robbery charges and four from three homicide cases.
        Police also arrested 33 juveniles on charges ranging from weapons offenses to narcotics.

    I wonder where the Post got it’s numbers; 24% more arrests from the Times is pretty significant. Now the Post is conceding the 650 number;

    D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said yesterday that crime across the District dipped 10 percent last weekend as a result of her “all hands on deck” initiative, in which 3,300 members of the force worked a pair of overtime shifts.

    I guess they rushed yesterday’s story to print. But the fact remains that if DC deployed it’s police force more effectively, they could fight crime better. Giuliani put cops on beats pounding the pavement and it worked fine then.