Free Parking on 4th of July

It seems that DPW is going to be closed tomorrow, and that means that MPD will be responsible for enforcing parking. And since they generally have bigger fish to fry, that means Free Parking!

DPW TO OBSERVE INDEPENDENCE DAY, TRASH/RECYCLING COLLECTIONS TO “SLIDE” TO NEXT DAY; PARKING ENFORCEMENT AND OTHER SERVICES WILL BE SUSPENDED

(Washington, DC) The DC Department of Public Works will observe Wednesday, July 4, Independence Day, and trash, recycling, parking enforcement and other services will be suspended. Trash and recycling collections resume Thursday when Wednesday’s collections will be made, Thursday’s collections will be made Friday and Friday’s collections will be made Saturday.

Parking enforcement (meters, residential and rush hour lane restrictions, and booting, towing or abandoned vehicle removal) also will resume Thursday. Other services that will be suspended for Independence Day include scheduled street and alley cleaning, graffiti removal or nuisance abatement and the Fort Totten Trash Transfer Station will be closed.

While DPW’s trash and recycling trucks are identical, trash and recycling materials are collected separately from one another. Trash and recycling containers should be put out for collection no earlier 6:30 pm the night before collection and removed from public space by 8 pm on collection day(s).

Residents with questions about the holiday schedule may call 202/727-1000 for further information. Also, the “Slide” Guide to holiday collections can be viewed in English and Spanish on the DPW Web site: www.dpw.dc.gov.

Let’s hope they’re playing with the $500 Rule.

(Free Parking image modified from the Board Control, Endgame by rossination, used under a CC Attribution license, and re-distributed under the normal terms of this site.)

The Asshole from Texas is Right

Let’s get this out of the way first: I want voting rights. I’m angry over my disenfranchisement, and I seethe at paying taxes without a vote in the matter. The UN considers me a human rights violation, and I’m inclined to agree.

So if you haven’t been paying attention to our plight – and honestly, if you don’t live here why would you really? – here’s a quick round-up: There has been some legislation winding its way through Congress called the DC Voting Rights Act, which aims to give us – me – a seat in the House of Representatives; and to prevent a perceived imbalance in this delicate Congress, to provide an additional seat to Utah as well.

There is some concern as to whether or not the legislation is even constitutional, since it grants representation to the States, which DC technically is not. Even our (relatively recent) vote for President is a special-case! The lack of Statehood is a touchy issue with many residents; but while it may seem tangential, indulge me and remember that most DC residents think we should be a state.

A few days ago, while the bill was being debated on the floor, Mr. Lamar S. Smith, a Republican from Texas, caused it to be abruptly pulled after suggestion amending the bill to modify the District’s extremely restrictive gun laws, in addition to granting a vote. It might seem odd if you haven’t been following along, but as a Federal district, our laws and self-governance are at the whim of Congress. So if they pass legislation that repeals our gun laws, then our gun laws are repealed. Of course, this got everyone up in arms – so to speak – and even made for an amusing segment on the Colbert Report the other night.

Coincidentally, those very same laws were recently struck down as unconstitutional by a Federal appeals court.

Here’s the other shoe: One of the arguments made by lawyers for the city in favor of the laws is that the Second Amendment applies to militias for states, and since the District of Columbia is not a state, the Second Amendment doesn’t apply. So we should be a state, with voting representation, and all the rights that entails – except for when we’d rather not?

Sorry, but the Asshole from Texas is right, and his crude political ploy makes an eloquent point for those who care to listen: We can’t have our cake and eat it, too. If we want voting rights, we have to do it the right way. The sound way. The way that isn’t going to get overturned in court at first chance. No shortcuts, no baby steps, no half-assed bills that the President is going to veto anyway. We have to achieve either actual statehood or another special-case amendment to the Constitution. There are no other ways.

Fenty Inaugural Ball – Kind of a Drag

Hedda snagged a couple of tickets to the Fenty Inaugural Ball this evening, and took me along as her date. It was a “black tie optional” evening, and we opted not to. Instead, she wore a cute black dress with a fantastic boa, and I wore a black pinstriped suit. We looked fine.

The ball itself, though, was kind of a drag. The entire main floor of the convention hall was rented, with a stage against one mall in the middle, and cordoned sections for presentations from each ward. They were pretty cool, and ranged from highlighting local artists to representatives from the zoo. Amusingly, the Ward 8 section had a table dedicated to Former Mayor-For-Life Marion Barry, which looked almost like a funeral shrine, complete with a smiling photograph surrounded by flowers. We were pissed at the Ward 2 area, though. It was all about Georgetown and Foggy Bottom, with absolutely no mention of any of the other vibrant neighborhoods, including Logan Circle and Dupont. What the fuck?

Food was scattered throughout the hall in “grazing stations,” and you could meander through the hall from one to the next trying new things. Several restaurants also had little tables and were serving free fare from their menu. By far the most popular was Clyde’s. They were serving fresh crab cake, and the line stretched halfway across the hall.

The bands playing were pretty cool, although there were strangely long gaps between groups playing. The last group we heard had stopped playing roughly a half hour before we left, and the hall was almost silent during that time.

We left after a couple hours, with the new mayor having yet to appear. The floor was concrete, and there was virtually nowhere to sit, and our legs were screaming for mercy. As we left, we noticed that they had stopped even trying to send people through the metal detectors we had been required to pass through on our way in – now they were just letting waves of party goers by en masse, with no screening whatsoever. Also, strangely, they had no escalators going up, and we saw more than one elderly couple pausing every few stairs as they made their way back up from the basement.

There just seemed to be a zillion little details that were overlooked. The whole affair seemed very unprofessional and poorly planned. For an evening costing some half a million dollars, we were really rather unimpressed.

Regardless, it was fun to go. The pictures are here.

My Idea to Bridge the Metro Budget Gap

With all the hubbub over possible massive fare increases on the Metro, I feel like I should throw my two cents in. After all, without a car, public transit is my primary method of non-pedestrian transportation. Such fare hikes would certainly affect me.

DCist has a rambling writeup on the issue. Feel free to read it or not – I’ve quoted the relevant portions of it here, re-ordered and with my comments.

Metro’s general plan could be summed up as charging for congestion. The goal is to spread demand over the system more evenly, and recoup the costs of congestion from those who most contribute to it.

Forgive the cliché, but the new Metro plan fails to see the Big Picture. The proposed budget makes perfect sense if Metro were a private entity intended to turn a profit. After all, if you increase the prices when demand is high, then you will spread the demand to less utilized resources, and maximize your profit. DCist says it a bit more eloquently.

However, the flaw in this thinking is that the market of Metro riders is elastic. Riders get off at downtown stations during rush hour because that’s where they need to be when they need to be there. With limited off-peak hours, few commuters would be able to take advantage of lower fares.

That is to say, this plan won’t decrease congestion, and instead penalizes the very people we should be encouraging to take the metro. We do not want their cars on the road!

Like any transit system, Metro is not designed to make a profit. [...] As we have pointed out in the past, Metro provides a benefit not just to riders, but to non-riders in the form of less pollution, less traffic, and a transportation option for workers without cars who nonetheless contribute significantly to the regional economy.

As others have pointed out, Metro’s current budget shortfall is due to the fact that it is virtually the only major transit system in the country without a dedicated source of funding. While D.C. has passed a measure to guarantee $50 million a year to Metro over 10 years, Maryland and especially Virginia have been so far unwilling to do the same. This keeps Metro from getting the $1.5 billion that Virginia Rep. Tom Davis has lined up in Congress that is conditional on dedicated local funding. As a result, Metro has to plow scarce operating revenues into expensive capital investments like new rail cars, helping to create the current budget crisis, and no doubt more in the future.

Ay, there’s the rub. The problem is that two of the three jurisdictions that benefit greatly from Metro – namely Maryland and Virginia – refuse to grant it any public funds for subsidy. It’s basically the commuter tax problem. The District has agreed to cough up regular funds, but everybody else is freeloading.

Since the budget is directly related to the lack of permanent funding, I think the new fare proposals should only penalize riders who live in those jurisdictions. Metro should modify the SmartTrip system to record the jurisdiction of the purchaser, and then charge higher fares to those who live in areas which do not publicly subsidize Metro. After all, those of us in DC are already paying higher fares because our tax dollars are spent on the Metro!

Voting When It Doesn’t Matter

It’s election day, my first in DC, and I voted this morning. I was musing with Hedda on our way to the polling place about how depressing it is that our vote really doesn’t matter. I don’t mean that in the figurative sense that most people voting (or not) today might, but in the most literal sense possible: My vote really doesn’t matter. Not only are we denied representation in Congress, but even our local elected officials have no real power. The Mayor, the D.C. Council, our ANC representatives: Every person we marked a ballot for this morning has no real final authority because our locally enacted laws and policies can be arbitrarily overridden by Congress, in which, as previously mentioned, we don’t even have representation.

But we did it anyway. We voted, going through the motions in some sort of pathetic Democracy Theater. For us, the ring of the bell of freedom is hollow and shrill – gutted by the dissonant noise of power-hungry politicians who fail to act to correct this moral injustice that is anathema to the ostensible founding ideals of our nation. It was incredibly depressing.

The ballots, however, were the best I’ve ever used. I’ve voted on touch screens (Virginia, 2004), paper punch cards of the infamous hanging chad variety (Chicago, 2002 & 2000), and while I didn’t vote in 1998 and 1996 due to failure to obtain an absentee ballot while I was away at college, I do remember the insane switches and levers inside the big mechanical voting machines from when I used to go inside them with mom and/or dad when I was little. The ballots today definitely win in every way.

It was a paper ballot: a big 8½ x 16 piece of high-grade, almost paperboard material. The names were clearly printed, and next to each name was an arrow, broken into two parts. To vote for a candidate, you simply drew a line, connecting the pieces with a pencil to create a complete arrow. Then you would walk the ballot over to a machine, which sucked it up into its gullet, and that was that. (Feel free to check out the sample ballots from the primary.)

So let’s see:

• Simple Enough for Anybody:
• Easily Machine Countable:
• Paper Trail for an Audit:
• Minimal bulky, expensive equipment:

Why can’t it be this simple everywhere? Why on earth do we need insane, computerized, touch-screen voting? Maybe I’m wrong: Maybe nobody’s vote matters anymore.

Gunshot Sensors in D.C. – Buy These Instead of Cameras

The Post has an article talking about gunshot sensors that have been installed in the District to help combat the most violent of crimes. It’s a really cool idea – one that I had heard about in Chicago before Hedda and I moved here.

The idea is simple: With a few sensitive microphones and a little bit of digital signal processing, you can triangulate the location of gunshots to within – it used to be a block, but the article says things have improved – a few feet. Since even owning a handgun is illegal in The District, and all rifles and shotguns must be unloaded and have trigger locks, sending police to the triangulated location of a gunshot is a good bet.

These things are a far sight better than the cameras MPD has been hanging all over the city. I really dislike the idea of the police watching over my shoulder constantly, and quantifying the effectiveness of cameras has proven difficult. [1]

Still, here in DC, they have gone up with relatively little resistance. Councilmember Jim Graham sends out a little note to the MPD-3D list every time a camera goes up or he successfully pushes through some funding for them – but he always adds this little addendum, as if to deflect impending attacks from civil liberty nuts like me. Like from this message last week:

AS [sic] I have said many times, crime cameras have limited utility: they can record evidence of crimes, but, as important, they dislodge embedded crime. Of course–once imbedded crime has been scattered–MPD has got to be ready to give chase. Yet the very act of moving crime has advantages, since what are probably long standing patterns are disrupted. Blocks which have suffered for years due to drug markets and other crimes know what I am talking about.

Chief Ramsey has committed to an action plan for just that type of police work for the Third District.

Let’s hope MPD really is ready for this, and let’s hope these statements are not forgotten once they have served their purpose. I fear that the political will to remove them is as ephemeral as the electrons via which I received the email.

(CCTV Camera Sign modified from the original by jsmjr, used and re-released under a CC BY-SA license.)

1. See, for example, Public Video Surveillance:
   Is It An Effective Crime Prevention Tool?, and The Effect of Closed Circuit Television on Recorded Crime Rates
   and Public Concern about Crime in Glasgow.

Please Leave the Logan Circle Traffic Lights Off

After the manhole explosions in the neighborhood on Saturday, the power was out on 13th Street north of the park. That included the traffic lights around Logan Circle itself.

As is typical, I walked by the circle several times over the weekend to and fro my various errands. The lights were blinking red instead of their usual behavior, and I noted the unusual sight of drivers safely navigating the circle with intelligence, care, and respect.

If you are not familiar with the navigational disasters that are DC’s traffic circles, be thankful. In theory they are a beautiful and effective method of safely intersecting several streets at once. In actuality, they are a nightmare for residents and out-of-towners alike. Peppered with inscrutable lane markings and flanked by a forest of poles on which are hung traffic lights pointing in every direction but yours, travelling around a circle is an exercise in confusion, frustration, and angry, dangerous driving. Every attempt by DDOT to improve the situation with clearer lane markings and more lights have simply made things worse.

Paradoxically, it seems that removing the lights altogether allowed people to stop worrying about following the inane rules and just drive. Instead of fretting over whether that red light they just ran was actually for them or for the waiting motorists at Rhode Island Avenue, they could focus on merging into and out of the traffic travelling around the circle at a steady moderate speed. There were no honking horns and no screeching brakes, and cars stopped for pedestrians crossing the streeet.

So, DDOT, please leave the traffic lights at Logan Circle off. Traffic circles are self-organizing, chaordic systems. Messing with it just makes them worse.

I Am A Human Rights Violation

Once again, the United Nations has smacked down the United States for denying me and my fellow DC residents voting representation in Congress. This time, however, the statement from the U.N. committee on human rights puts our disenfranchisement on the level with torture, prisoner abuse, and Guantanamo Bay.

You see, the United States signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1992. From the article:

Article 25 [of the treaty] says “every citizen . . . without unreasonable restrictions” has the right to participate in public affairs directly or through “freely chosen representatives” and to vote and to be elected “at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.”

In a letter accompanying the U.S. response, Warren Tichenor, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, denied that District residents are excluded from the nation’s political process: “The position of the District . . . is not a human rights violation; it is rather a justifiable and important aspect of the federal system of government freely chosen by citizens of the United States.”

Sure, Mr. Tichenor, freely chosen by the citizens of the United States – except for the 1/2 million citizens living in the District. Your words ring hollow as someone who does not suffer the burden of Federal income taxation without even the right to vote in exchange. Unless the United Nations has classified you as a human rights violation, please consider this my formal request to you to get bent.

My First Ever Letter to the Editor

Last week’s City Paper had a really good article entitled “A Line in the Sandbox” that discussed some of the trials and tribulations of a particular DC Public School principal at the hands of some wealthy, oppositional defiant Dupont residents.

Several pages into that article was an aside discussing a particular condominium association that was attempting to regulate playground time at the school across the street because of the noise of the children playing. That little adjunct incensed me and prompted me to write my first ever letter to the editor. It didn’t get printed in today’s edition, so I’m posting it here.

Editor

Washington City Paper

2390 Champlain St. NW

Washington, DC 20009

June 16, 2006

Dear Mr. Editor,

Buried seven pages into the excellent “A Line in the Sandbox” is a rare glimpse into the mind of the so-called “guilty liberal” that has become so commonplace in Northwest DC. The few paragraphs devoted to Jeff Wise, Scott Henrichsen, and the Pierre Condominium’s objection to the noise of children on the playground reminds me of a town neighboring the one in which I grew up. As is typical of Midwestern suburbia, a grove of cookie-cutter houses was springing up in a small field, although this one happened to be across the street from the local municipal airport. No more than a few years passed before the residents in those new neighborhoods began pushing to get the airport closed – or at least restricted – because of the noisy Cessnas approaching for landing over the homes. The gall and/or stupidity of those residents quite appropriately elicits at least a response of astonishment, if not anger.

As one of the so-called gentrifiers, who probably paid too much for his nine hundred square feet of Logan Circle, I am often baffled at why we are decried by our new neighbors despite the socio-political leanings that would seem to make us their best allies. The selfish and self-righteous attitude of Mr. Wise and his fellow Pierre residents at least partially allays my confusion. Wise’s incredulity at the parents’ powerful response to regulating their children’s playground – however inappropriate that response may have been – demonstrates a profound lack of real connection to the community in which he lives. It’s not because he’s gay, it’s because he’s an asshole – the modern-day urban equivalent of the stereotypical angry old geezer shaking his fist and hollering at “those dang kids” to keep off the lawn.

If peace and quiet are really what he and his fellow Pierre owners desire, perhaps they should not have chosen to live in the city. Sirens, traffic, car alarms, and other such urban noises are certainly at least as cacophonous as children playing. I would wager that the Virginia and Maryland exurbs could offer a quiet, idyllic street not only on the weekends, but all week long! For everyone’s sake, let’s hope they don’t buy near an airport.

With Best Regards,

Brian Vargas

D.C. Smoking Ban Almost Law

Well, Mayor WIlliams has decided to niether sign nor veto the smoking ban. In most jurisdictions, this would mean that the law would take effect. However, the District’s second-class citizens lack real self-government, and so now there is a 30-day review period during which Congress may decided to disallow the measure from becoming law.

But this isn’t a post about our city’s citizen’s lack of fundamental rights, it’s a post about the smoking ban.

So let’s clear up one thing first: I hate smoking. My dad died of lung cancer when I was a teenager, most likely attributable to his use of tobbacco fifteen years prior, so there is nothing positive about cigarettes.

However, I am totally against the smoking ban. It is not the place of the government to simply ban in privately owned establishments what has been a long-standing social practice.

Ostensibly, the ban is being put into place as a public health measure protecting workers who are exposed to second-hand smoke through the course of their jobs. Think about wait staff at a restaurant – many of them may not smoke, but they may suffer from the same health problems as smokers due to their constant exposure. That’s a worthy goal for legislation.

Except that almost every person for the ban with whom I’ve spoken wants it because they simply don’t like smoking. They want to eat smoke-free, and they want to go to smoke-free bars. Is it right to limit others’ personal freedom simply because we don’t like how they choose to exercise it?

I’m not going to lie. I will certainly enjoy the smoke-free restaurants and bars, but an outright ban is not the right solution. What is the right solution? Well, let’s take an amusing quote from the Post article I linked:

Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, called Williams’s decision a “historic victory for the public’s right to breathe clean air in the nation’s capital,” saying it “adds to the growing momentum to enact such laws across the country and around the world.”

This line of rhetoric is simply ridiculous. In fact, the DC smoking ban leaves public property as the only remaining place where smokers can induldge, other than their own homes. This ban, as before, still exposes me to smoke when I walk down the sidewalk behind a smoker. I still have to breath in their smoke when they light up on the Metro escalators legally (because we’ve passed the “No Smoking” signs). I’m still forced to endure their cancer cloud when I’m in the park, and worse, the smokers are free to continue littering butts up and down the street.

But this post isn’t about the callousness of smokers with regard to their discarded butts, it’s a post about the smoking ban.

When I walk into a smokey bar, it is my own choice – weighing the benefits against the costs – to do so. When I walk down the street behind a chimney, I am not given that option. I would fully support a public smoking ban, but not the current private smoking ban.

There are better ways to discourage smoking while still allowing personal freedom. Instead of a smoking ban, we should require employers to compensate workers in smokey environments with hazard pay. Thus, it becomes a personal and business decision for all parties involved. If a business owners decides his club’s ambiance requires a smokey haze, or even if they just feel it’s their fundamental right, then they can still exercise that right. Furthermore, workers will then be given the option to weigh the risks of present and future disease against the benefit of additional money.

To be sure, it is still not a perfect solution. In such a scenario, the low-income will be naturally driven to the more dangerous, higher-paying jobs; and while such a disparity in distribution of mortal risk between the rich and the poor has been a common theme throughout American history, it may not be something we should encourage with such an idea.

But this post isn’t about universal health care, it’s a post about the smoking ban.