DC Workers Hit Porn Sites More Frequently Than Most Citizens Breathe

The great Samuel Johnson recommended the "suspension of disbelief" when viewing plays or reading fiction. One has to channel Johnson these days as a DC taxpayer. One scandal of corruption goes to the next but this one might be the best:

Nine D.C. government employees were fired Wednesday and 32 more will be disciplined for viewing pornographic Web sites thousands of times on the job last year, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced.

The worst offender, according to data provided by the Office of the Chief Technology Officer, was a single employee whose computer registered 48,002 porn site page views in 2007. That averages to about one hit every 2.5 minutes.

Even worse stats fro the Wa Post:

Each of the nine employees clicked on porn sites more than 19,000 times last year.

My back fo the envelope math means that those employees were refreshing their porn screen more than 50 times per day. I wish I had a job like that, and it also paid me a pension and protected me from getting fired.

Some DC Schools Will Have Textbooks in Sept, is This Progress?

New DC schools "Chancellor" Michelle Rhee just announced that that

most of the District's public schools will start the academic year this month stocked with required textbooks, although more than half of the schools lack the requisite number

Iknow that Rhee is working hard, as much as a Colorado divorcee with young children can work.

As a DC taxpayer I say scuttle the whole system. Rhee might be brilliant, but unless she finds a way to give taxpayers relief for funding the most expensive and least productive public education system in the US I will not be a big fan.

Michelle Rhee- The Salvation of DC Schools?

Mayor Fenty has annointed Michelle Rhee the "Chancellor" of DC schools. He awarded her with a $300K salary and a hired driver, an excess that no DC official should have.

I know people who know Michelle Rhee. They really like her, but I have harbored suspicions about her since I knew that she was leading her NY non-profit from Colorado as she raised her two young children with a husband she is now divorcing. Fenty acknowledged that Rhee needs to live here. And, as the Wash Post reported, Rhee was given a bonus of $25,000 to compensate for her moving the the District. I would think that the $300K salary would have been enough.

As a business person, my experience is that women with young children are distracted and should not be put in important positions. To top that, Rhee is a single mom, so her distraction and commitment to her children is even more extreme. I know this is politically incorrect, but how a single mom with two young kids has the bandwidth to justify her huge salary and reform the dysfunctional DC schools is beyond me.

DC Schools Break a Record at $18k Per Student

The DC public school budget is a moving target, veering hundreds of millions of dollars in many directions. That in itself is cause for concern. But what really scared me is that the Wa Post today cited a billion dollar budget to educate 55,000 students. That dollar figure is worse than taxpayers' worst nightmares and comes out to about $18,000 to poorly educate every DC K-12 student. For fuck's sake, we could send them all to Potomac School or Cathedral for not much more than that.

The city is spending $3.2 million to do an audit to learn how, exactly, the school system spends its money. While this is good thing, it is horrifying to realize that they currently have no idea how $1 billion of taxpayer money is being spent.

D.C. government officials will launch an extensive audit of the city's public schools today designed to pinpoint how the system is spending its $1 billion budget and identify areas of waste and mismanagement.

Taxpayers pay through the nose for all sorts of waste and mismanagement. When will an elected official rise to try to help us?

DC 2008 Budget 9% Higher, Kills Proposed 5% Cap on Property Taxes

This week the DC Council once again asserted its desire to grow beyond the ability of its taxpayers to finance it. The Council passed a $5.6 billion 2008 budget, which is 9% higher than the 2007 budget. As a point of reference, the consumer price index increased 2.6% in the 12 month period ended April, 2007.

Even worse, the budget nixed Council hero Jack Evans' proposal to cap property tax increases at 5% per year. Evans' proposal was ambushed by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, which sought to kill the cap by cravenly making it a racial issue, claiming that most of the cap's benefits would flow to predominantly white Wards 2 and 3. Any property tax deduction or cap would benefit most those whose properties have the highest assessments, but every tax payer would benefit proportionally. The DCFPI also left out of their press attack that diverse Ward 4 would be a big beneficiary, something that Evans deftly pointed out today on the Kojo Nnamdi show on WAMU.

The Washington Post is the house organ for the DCFPI. It had only one article on Evans' proposal and and a Schwartz proposal to reduce DC estate taxes. That article quoted generously from the lobby group before even explaining the details of either proposal to its readers. The article is so one-sided that it is worth reading the first three paragraphs:

The D.C. Council is considering substantial breaks on inheritance and real estate taxes, and the plans could cost the city almost $100 million in revenue over the next four years, officials said yesterday.

Some council members said the proposed cuts are a way to encourage homeowners to stay in the District. But a report scheduled for release today by a think tank concludes that the legislation would most benefit the city's wealthiest residents and do little for people who don't own their homes.

"This is a city that is divided by income already," said Ed Lazere, who wrote the report. Lazere is executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, which analyzes District tax and budget issues.

The Wa Post also wrote an editorial titled "Giveaway" that attacked the tax reductions and, of course, cited the conclusions of the DCFPI. How reducing the rate of tax increases from three times the inflation rate to about 1.5 times is a "giveaway," I have no idea. If the DCFPI really want DC to be affordable to seniors and low-income residents then they should endorse lower property taxes and enable those constituents to be able to keep their homes.

City Tax Reduction Dances

The City Council is, reasonably, considering legislation that would reduce DC taxes. The legislation is a positive step but only relieves current DC property owners and not new ones, which is implicitly unfair.

The Wa Post coverage of this tax relief was so skewed to the left viewpoint that I am almost shocked. The subheadline on the story was Report Says the Rich Would Benefit Most From D.C. Proposals. The article then went on to quote at length in the second paragraph, before the article even outlined the tax proposal, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute's opinion of it.

Predictably, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute says that lowering property taxes benefits "the rich" and as such ought to be avoided. In reality, any tax decrease benefits all of the the people who are actually paying taxes and the fact that it benefits them should not be a means to penalize them more.

Too Many DC Agencies to Count and Pay For

As you can see from my prior post, I have been spending time on the DC web site. While it is a good site for paying parking tickets, it also reveals the vastness of the DC government and what they are trying to accomplish, which far exceeds taxpayers's ability to pay for them.

This page shows all of the DC agencies. Why isn't any candidate proposing eliminating about half of them? Does DC really need an office on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs? Just about every pressure group has an office and there are also vague offices like the Clean City Initiative. Go through the list and you can eliminate many agencies. Shouldn't we, as the people who fund these offices, be entitled to elected officials who care a whit about our money and close down unnecessary offices?

A Taxpayer's Lessons in Getting Basic DC Services and a Welfare Benefit Too

Tired of paying a dollar figure in DC taxes that is a high multiple of the services I receive in return, I have dedicated myself to finding out how to make this socialist welfare state pay me back a little. I would prefer to reduce all taxes and services, but that is impossible. So the only thing I can do to make myself less resentful of my neighbors who somehow have me paying to support their "learning disabled" but otherwise completely normal children in a $75,000 per year school is to see if there is anything at all beyond trash collection that I can get from this government. The DC web site, I have discovered, is very helpful in this pursuit.

It has a feature that is called "Request a Service." My first service request was to get sidewalks on my street. How a street in DC has no sidewalks, even as the city politicians bemoan the state of pedestrian safety, is beyond me. My second service request was for trees to be planted in front of my house. You can actually do this, and it seems that if you don't request them, they won't plant them. They will remove them, as they did the tree in front of my house two years ago, but to get a new one you have to request a service. I am catching on. DC tree planting is so poor that the Casey Trees Endowment Fund has had to step in.

Trees and sidewalks are basic government functions and not welfare benefits. But how can a person who pays excessive taxes get a welfare benefit? I found the answer! Prominently featured on the DC web site is the DC Rx Prescription Drug Discount Card, which gives residents, regardless of income, a discount of up to 20% on prescription drugs. I have my own company and pay for my own health insurance but I don't have drug coverage, so I qualify. My card is in the mail, assuming that someone in DC government remembers to send it. The site does not say who pays for this benefit, but I assume it is DC taxpayers and that David Catania, the biggest disappointment on the Council, sponsored this law. My favorite feature of this welfare program is that it also pays for your pet's medications.

Jury Duty Blog

Jury duty is something that DC residents have to perform much more than almost anyone on the planet, at least according to my unofficial anecdotal surveys. In ten years in the District I have served five times, just within the legal limit of how many times they can call you. Today I did my latest.

The experience is always heavy for me as it is a window into the underbelly of DC and the daily tragedies that are played out in the criminal justice system.

I arrived at the I. Carl Moultrie III courthouse on Indiana Ave at 10:30. The building itself is an assault on the senses: ribbed concrete stained by the years and on a windy, cold plaza. The building is named after the head of the DC Superior Court at that time, 1972. The exterior of the building is etched with the names of about ten other civil servants and the walls of the atrium inside are filled with the names of former judges. I cannot imagine a private sector equivalent to this sort of vanity and self-importance.

Outside, there were two long lines to pass through the metal detectors and screening machines so I joined one of them. Sadly, the eye can immediately distinguish those serving jury duty and those who are there to see a trial of friends or family members. The jury pool comprises all races and nationalities: the hip urbanista, the business woman reading the WSJ, the somewhat frail and elderly genteel black woman behind me and the doddering elderly WASP man wearing a tie and tweed jacket but looking sort of rumpled, like his wife passed away years ago and he doesn't quite know how to launder his clothing properly.

In contrast to the diversity of the jury pool, the court attendees were uniformly black and underclass. Think: The Wire in DC.

After passing through security, I went to the juror check-in. The line was unimaginably long. It took me one hour and 45 minutes to check in, a new record. The frail woman behind me was ready to pass out. We were then dismissed for lunch and a couple of hours after lunch were dismissed for good. In the line to get our $4 for serving, the man ahead of me was illiterate and couldn't understand the screen prompts. Ten minutes later after I helped him get through the transaction II thought, how could an illiterate man serve on a jury?

DC jury duty confronts you with all of the dysfunction of this city, from having so many felons that we get called every two years to having potential jurors who cannot read or write. It also confronts you with the long arm of the law, as so many cases are drug-related. It also reminds you that judges are so entitled and imperious that they get their names etched into a public building.

Mary Cheh Emulates NY In The Worst Way

As the article on Joshua Bell being totally ignored by DC commuters showed that we are not New York, our council members pushed legislation to make us like New York in the worst way. Specifically, Ward 3 council member Mary Cheh has proposed legislation to ban trans-fats in the District. I would link to a Wa Post story, but there isn't one, as the Wa Post doesn't really cover District news. Sadly, I only read about this ban proposal in the Northwest Current, which is not available online. A quote:

Cheh says, "We are not getting any thinner."

Then the one-sided article goes onto quote the bane of freedom called the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Those guys would have us all living in plastic bubbles eating tofu while wearing helmets and never drinking or smoking. I totally despise them, and I don't despise many things, but they should be thrown out of our country as they have no idea what freedom means or what our country means.

Please, fellow DCists, write your council members to oppose this idiocy. Unfortunately, Cheh had four co-sponsors. We can assume sell-out Catania will also convert and our only hope is Schwarz.

PS can I tell you how disenfranchised I feel? Not only do I not have a congressional vote, but for the past four months I don't even have a ward rep. Even worse, Kathy Patterson, in some back room political move, agreed to shave off of my part of Ward 3 to annex with Ward 4, which is a mile across the park and we have no streets in common or anything else. So I am in this little sliver of nothingness in Chevy Chase annexed to a Ward with completely different issues and radical politics.

They could have done the redistricting in a much more logical/neighborhood way, taking some away from Ward 2 and moving them into 3. Wards should represent neighborhoods that are contiguous. Ugh.

Joshua Bell and Are We Really New York-Esque

The Washington region is rich. In fact, the three most prosperous large counties in the United States are in the Washington suburbs, according to census figures released yesterday, which show that the region has the second-highest income and the least poverty of any major metropolitan area in the country.

But how rich are we in culture? The Wa Post did an amazing study of that by putting a man who is known as the best American classical musician in the Metro as a busker. The reporter told the head of the Ken Cen about the effort and when Slatkin heard it was Joshua Bell he said, "NO!!!"

As a woman in the study said,"It was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in Washington," Furukawa says. "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn't do that to anybody. I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?"

The $5.7 BN Budget Horror

The Examiner had this scoop on the DC 2008 budget, which the Post missed:

District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty’s $5.7 billion fiscal year 2008 budget, unveiled Friday, ramps up funding for public charter schools and new police officers, sets the mayor’s school takeover plan into motion, raises one fee and eats up a chunk of the city’s reserves.

Based on the latest US census count of the District, that budget adds up to $10,354 per DC resident of tax burden per year. Which means that most individuals without children will pay a multiple of that.

Is that really the way to run a city? It seems incredibly expensive to me.

DC Schools: We Need More $$ Because We Have Fewer Students

The DC public school system has asked the city [A.K.A. DC taxpayers] for an additional $70 million to add to the proposed $810 million 2008 budget, which was already a 4% increase over last year's budget. The reason? According to the Northwest Current (no links available online), the schools are,

Faced with budget cuts due to falling enrollment...

No rational enterprise would cite additional costs of dealing with fewer customers. But the DC schools are not rational as they cannot fire employees even if they are not needed anymore so we taxpayers are stuck paying for them and their out-of-market retirement and health plans.

It is time for DC elected officials to stop the insanity of buying votes with union endorsements.

In related news, a Wash Examiner's article on dropping DC enrollment is here. George Washington University granted nine DC students full tuition, but did not let DC charter school students apply. Finally, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation allocated $122 million to DC high schoolers', including charter students, but did some racial profiling by limiting those grants to Wards 7 and 8.

P.S. the $14.7K that DC spends per student is the highest in the country.

More on Metrobus!!

For another Metrobus observation, go to Rock Creek Rambler.

I personally see Metrobuses fly through red lights regularly and when I am on them I start to pray the rosary, as the drivers seem to place no value on human life. I would LOVE to review the personnel file of the psychopath who drives my E2 route.

Congestion Pricing for DC?

A little-noticed provision in the budget that Bush sent to Congress provides for $130 million to be allocated to "congestion pricing" schemes, which charge drivers a fee to drive into city centers. From the WSJ [subscription only]:

the centerpiece of the traffic plan involves an initiative that some critics say amounts to a tax, a plan depicted by administration officials as "congestion pricing." The administration will award $130 million in grants starting this spring to help cities and states build electronic toll systems that would charge drivers fees for traveling in and out of big cities during peak traffic times. The money also could go to other congestion strategies such as expanded telecommuting, but administration officials make it clear they think congestion pricing is the most powerful tool they have. The White House will seek an additional $175 million for congestion initiatives in next year's budget.

DC, of course, will gobble up this federal money and try to introduce a congestion pricing scheme of their own. The Wa Post op-ed says that the price will be $1, but the London price, which is the only actual experience of this practice, is 9 pounds per day, which equals about $18 US dollars.