February 13, 2006
Morning Roundup: No Snow Day Edition
For a region that often runs in terror at the mere sight of snow, Washington and its environs managed the weekend's snow-dump with a relatively calm and mature demeanor. This DCist was shocked to awake yesterday to cleared roadways and open businesses, though power outages were reported in some areas and local airports struggled to get air traffic in and out. Today should proceed regularly -- an unfortunate truth for those of us whose employers follow the federal government's lead on delayed openings -- though some local school districts are playing it safe and closing altogether.
Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter: So this may not be at all related to on-goings in the District, especially since it happened in Texas, but we figured we may as well get in on the action and let DCist readers crack some jokes. Long story short, Vice President Dick Cheney shot and wounded -- accidentally, or so says the VP's office -- a hunting companion. And...go.
MLB Officials Question Stadium Lease: Please, please let it be a joke. Over the weekend MLB officials expressed doubts over the stadium lease that the D.C. Council passed early last Wednesday morning, notes NBC 4. As is stands, the lease agreement caps the city's contribution at $611 million, a provision that MLB officials stated might contradict provisions of the initial agreement they signed with the District in late September 2004. According to a Post story on the issue, Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner of the Chicago White Sox and chairman of the Expos' relocation committee, has even gone as far as to push for binding arbitration, a step which would delay the project even longer and cost the city millions of dollars in fees.
Motorcades Cost District Millions: We've all seen Vice President Cheney's motorcade flying through stopped traffic at 5 p.m. on any given day, making its usual way from the Old Executive Office Building to his residence at the Naval Observatory. But how much does that motorcade cost, and who is paying for it? WTOP reports today that the District -- which, like any city or town visited by a senior official, is responsible for paying for police, fire, and EMS support for motorcades -- shelled out $1.5 million last year for 1,300 motorcades through the city, pushing the total since 2000 up to $10 million. Cheney's trip home -- which could just as easily be completed using public transportation, we found -- costs $2,000 to District taxpayers each time. District officials are obviously not happy with the arrangement, and have long been trying to get the feds to pay them back.
Briefly Noted: Complaints with MetroAccess jump 445 percent in one year ... District paramedic beaten in ambulance ... Gaithersburg police join the Segway revolution ... Spotsylvania County police visit prostitutes undercover.
Picture snapped by MatthewBradley.
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I have to say that most DC streets were cleared and I'm pleased. It wasn't that long ago, when even major roads like Pennsyvania Ave and Wisconsin ave were ice hockey rinks after snow.
$2000/motorcade...you've got to be kidding!?! how true fiscal conservatives could be happy with this is beyond me. i don't care what party the president is from, this shouldn't be happening.
I live in DC for the snowdays. I feel gypped.
Who wants to make bets that Cheney icing some dude with a shotgun leads to a rise in his poll numbers?
If I can speak unofficially for the 30-line - and as someone who would also be getting off the bus at Wisconsin & Calvert - we don't want Cheney.
Let him navigate through the sewer system as is his way.
"some" local schools? PG, Howard, Montgomery, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Fauqier County schools are closed. Arlington, Falls Church, and Alexandria are on two-hour delyas. I'd say that's pretty much all of them :)
The motorcade issue is one of those long standing injustices for DC. Kind of like how every other city/state gets to tax the income of sports players from visiting teams who play in their city, but DC doesn't. (I think that is how it works...) It is so galling how DC gets played, knows it is being played, hates and rails against being played, and is unable to actually do anything about it.
"DC Resident": I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but the expression of "being gypped" has some nasty racist roots. The word comes from "gypsy" and there's no justification for equating the whole cultural group with being thieves or swindlers. Again, I know folks often use the expression with no intent to make the slur.
Thanks, John, for pointing that out. I went 23 years before someone bothered to tell me that it was a offensive term. I had never before that associated the term with any ethnicity or group of people. I try not to use it now, but it does seem to be a very common word in our vernacular. I am sure I sometimes still use it without thinking about it.
Are we that politically correct now that we cannot even use the word gyp? How many words have racist origins? I mean, gimme a break here.
Are we that politically correct now that we cannot even use the word gyp? How many words have racist origins? I mean, gimme a break here.
A lot of words have racist origins. Like Paddy wagon, and I, as someone of Irish decent. I always remind people of this. Because, you know? When I hear the word. I think of it as a racial slur. And that's what PC is trying to suggest, that the feelings of the listener matter as much as the speaker.
I'd heard the same etymology about "gyp" but never bothered to really look it up. A quick trip to the OED reveals the following tidbits (because this discussion is already so far off the subject, we might as well get the facts straight):
"Gyp" in the sense we know it was popularized in American fiction in the early 1900s, especially Fitzgerald on Dos Passos. It's the third definition under the entry for "gyp," which the OED says is only "perhaps" related to "gipsy" or "gypsey" (the Romanian folks we're worried about offending).
Anyone else want to pick it up from here? I've got stuff to do.
If someone can go 23 years using an expression widely before someone takes offense, the expression really isn't that hurtful. I mean just because something could be offensive doesn't require people to immediately go up in arms when they hear it. One's frustration after being gypped in the traditional sense of the word has nothing to do with Gypsies. No insult is intented, and really no offense should be taken. This is what is called CONTEXT.
A little forgiveness and understanding goes a lot further than mindlessly avoiding words. To paraphrase another DCist (I forgot which), those easily offended suffer from a character flaw. Let's tolerate and accept eachother--if we can't actually respect eachother--for our differences. We would have a much more unified, humanistic society if we did.
And this is the very dicourse that leads to respect and tolerance. Points of common aspiration are established and current difference are reconciled with these aspirations. Way to go. Very humanistic, methinks.
Cheney's motorcade just about ran me flat as I waited at Calvert & Connecticut on my bike one winter night a couple of years ago...hard to forget his ugly frightmask leering through the window of the speeding limo like the fucking Marquise D’Evremonde. It warms my heart to think that my DC tax dollars are paying for that daily circus.
Hey, is there any way that the District can just walk away from the baseball deal if MLB takes the city to arbitration?
I know how unlikely that is to happen, but at some point shouldn't we just say "enough is enough" and walk away from these turkeys?
(nb: no offense to citizens of or immigrants from Turkey)
At this point, DC can't really just walk away from baseball in the district. They signed an agreement with MLB back in 2004. If they broke they agreement, the would be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars basically. If they win the arbitration case, I'm not sure what happens, but the odds are heavily against their winning the case.
Katmere,
No city or state gets to tax visiting sports players. By that logic, when I make a business trip to NYC, I owe NYC and NY state a portion of my salary. That's not the case.
Obviously you're getting at the so-called "commuter taxes", but I don't know why you felt the need to demonstrate it with the bizarre example of visiting sports teams. Honestly, it may be questionable if the local team has to pay taxes there. If the team's headquarters are in another state and they practice somewhere else, it's questionable whether they owe any taxes to the locality where the stadium sits. I don't know that for sure, however I'm fairly certain that NYC can't tax Kolzig for playing a few aways at the Garden.
Reid, that's not true. About 20 states have a so-called "jock tax." Michigan being one of them, so they grabbed a slice of the Super Bowl paychecks. The tax is usually around 3-5 pct, though California's is something like 9.3 pct. But theoretically, the player's tax burden is unchanged because they can deduct the out of state taxes from their home state income tax filing.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Taxes/P112872.asp
Wow Mike that's for picking that up (and correcting Reid) California is really sticking it to the "jocks" as the state income tax is like 4% much less than DCs.
Of course in California something like 70% of the budget is covered by only the top 5% of the tax payers. Or something like that, I rounded off, but I think I'm close.
That's why when Hollywood or the Tech industry have a bad year the whole state suffers so much. I guess with player contracts, though, athletes are the gift that keep on giving even if a specific sport is having a bad year in terms of revenue.
I was suprirsed too by the California tax. I did a quick Google search to get the California figure after remembering the bit about Illinois passing its own tax after California collected from Michael Jordan after the NBA finals. That's a lot of $$$ for Jordan.
I don't know how old that MSN article is, but it raises an interesting point in that some states may start collecting taxes from businessman, etc. who do some work in their state on trips. I don't think the tax is written specifically for athletes in most cases, but they're the easiest to collect from.
Wow, I stand corrected. I apologize to Katmere for my remarks; they were clearly uninformed! (although I still think the ability, or lack thereof, of DC to tax visiting hockey and basketball players is insignificant compared with the normal salaries paid to non-residents that DC can't tax [not that I'm for a commuter tax, which I'm not]).
I will say I think that there are far worse injustices done to DC, but I thought that the so-called "jock tax" made a decent analogy to the motorcade issue. It isn't a direct analogy, but close. However, I did not know as much about it as Mike B. did.
Also, when talking about words that are potentially harmful, I don't think it hurts to change small behaviors to avoid racial slurs. I don't think too many people get particularly agitated about any of the terms mentioned above since few people realize the possible insult implied. Still, is it really such an inconvenience to change a small behaviour because it is nicer?
The way I went 23 years without knowing about the conotations of the previously discussed words is that I grew up in a small, backwater town with almost no diversity. It took someone who had some ties to gypsy heritage to point out what I was saying. (Which, even if I wasn't from a small, backwater town, may have taken me 23 years to come across. As I understand it, they are not an overly large ethnic group here in the States.) They weren't even that upset, they just mentioned that thought it would be nicer of me to say "cheat" straight up, who ways I to deny them?
I had never thought about the history of "paddy wagon", either. (Then again, I don't know if I ever say it.)
http://www.washingtonpost.
com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/13/AR2006021300695.html
Soon there will be no smoking in VA
I think Irish-Americans have done well enough in America that they don't deserve the right to be offended by "slurs" like paddy wagon. I mean, nobody is crying over the term Limey, or Jock (a scotsman). How about Frenchy or Kraut? When an ethnic group does well, I don't think so-called disparaging terms should be taboo. Paddy is not an intrinsicly offensive term (it just a gaelic shortening of Patrick) it just was used disparagingly when "no Irish need apply" signs were common. Now those only hang in "Irish" bars like the Lucky Bar.
Plus, I love telling my boss I have to stay home due to a touch of the Irish Flu.
Did you guys hear what G.H.W. Bush said about the editorializing that took place during the King funeral service last week?
"Anybody that shoots at the president of the United States at a funeral, I just didn't appreciate that," Mr. Bush added.
hahahaha - what a poor choice of words.