August 2, 2007
Morning Roundup: Strange Days Edition
Schools Could Lose Federal Funding: An internal D.C. Public Schools report has found that officials diverted funds from a vocational education grant and put it toward school building maintenance and construction, an act which constitutes a “direct violation” of federal law which could lead D.C. Schools to lose their federal funding. The total findings of this recent audit, which appear in a 'High Risk memo,' also shed light on how school officials have been guilty of bad accounting and payroll practices and failing to conduct supply inventories for years at a time.
Police Seek Burglar Who Didn't Wear Pants: A suspect is sought by police in an attempted bank burglary in which a man entered the offices through the ceiling wearing only boxer shorts and a white blazer. Police described the suspect as being about 30 years old and very skinny, with dreadlocks. Was this a brilliant criminal mind at work, believing anyone who happened upon him would be distracted by the fact that he was wearing no pants? Or was he just a little hot, and trying to get comfortable?
Briefly Noted: Virginia likely to face a $1.2 billion budget shortfall ... Shocking acquittal for 2002 bus shootings ... Two strange shootings overnight in Northeast ... Woman arrested after videotaping just a few seconds of Transformers in a movie theater.
This Day in DCist: In 2006 we played the world's tiniest violin for senators who have to deal with crowded elevators, and in 2005 we learned that Butterstick was a boy.
Photo by edevere
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Okay, so VA's budget gap is $1.2 billion. MD's is $1.5 billion. What are DC's numbers? I recall a Natwar Ghandi doom-and-gloom scenario about debt related to borrowing, but nothing on budget shortfalls. Will DC still be in the black next year, and for how long? Commercial property tax revenues seem to be going strong, condo sales are cooling off, and single-family sales are in the crapper.
Seems like the remedy pitched in all cases are tax hikes; program cuts are either superficial or not at all.
That $1.2 billion dollar shortfall "likelihood" had a whiff of Ed Lazere about it. Turns out I was right. The number comes from some brand new organization called the Commonwealth Institute, an organization funded by the State Fiscal Analysis Initiative, which itself is organized by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which itself formed the DC Fiscal Policy Institute.
All these organizations preach from the same hymnal. And yet newspapers (and blogs) routinely repeat their numbers without pointing out that it's like quoting gun stats from the NRA. Nothing wrong with it, but some context would be helpful.
sucks for that girl getting arrested for taping a bit of the transformers movie. not the smartest thing to do, but i doubt she was going to sell it online or something.
makes me want to boycott regal cinemas ballston for being such harda$$es.
Ugh, I shoulda known from the first paragraph this had Ed Lazere's fingerprints:
"A Richmond-based budget watchdog organization warned yesterday that Virginia is likely to face a shortfall of $1.2 billion in the coming two years, threatening such services as public education, Medicaid and mental health programs unless lawmakers raise taxes."
Yes, because cutting services is NEVER an option to balance budgets in this region. Hell, a mix of both would be refreshing, but no, gotta hike taxes. When the only tool you have is a hammer...
This whole piece reads like it was cribbed word-for-word from a DC Fiscal Policy Institute missive. Why does the Post even bother hiring reporters in the first place if they're just going to recycle this stuff?
Monkey are you off your meds again... Look DC has outperformed MD and VA financially for the past 6/7 years. Right now, sales tax revenue is up, income tax revenue is way up, employment is up, and more importantly, commercial propert tax revenue is steady and may well go up (more than 70% of the real property tax is tied to commercial rather than residential property transfers). And while residential real estate isn't booming like say 4 years ago, the market is still very good. One of the many untold stories of this decade (as of now) is not only how DC turned itself around BUT how the city has consistently outperformed its "more prosperous" neighbors financially.
Btw, did you see that Warehouse is moving to Columbia Heights? Great news!
#3: "not the smartest thing to do..."
more like colossally stupid. i have little compassion for someone too dumb to realize that holding up a camera to the screen in a movie theatre might not be the smartest idea.
plus, they arrived late to the movie, which is reason enough to be strung up by your thumbs anyway.
I can appreciate DC's economic performance in relation to VA/MD, but what I'm talking about is that magic word "sustainability." Or is this that "new economy" thing that only goes up and never "corrects?"
The other irritating thing about the VA budget piece was how they define "tax cut" as "not raising taxes that year." By that rationale, since I didn't get a bonus this year, my SALARY WAS SLASHED!
And anybody who videotapes ANY Michael Bay movie deserves to go to prison. A Turkish prison. Where they're forced to watch Armageddon until the rapid-fire jumpcuts give them a goddamned headache. But that's probably against the Geneva Convetion.
Have to disagree #3. I think she got arrested for being stupid. It might be harsh given that she only recorded a small part of it, but you have to know that theater owners and the feds are really looking out for bootleggers and if they catch someone filming inside the theater they'll throw the book at them. She's definitely paying the stupid tax right now and her defense sounds weak- why not just email homeboy a clip online? And the movie's not even that good.
DC is in the "Al Queda" economy -- does terror-related spending ever end?
Sure she was stupid, but if you think her defense sounds weak, what do you believe she was actually doing? You think she was really planning to sell a 20-second bootleg?
"you have to know that theater owners and the feds are really looking out for bootleggers"
You do? I thought the feds were looking for terrists. Not everyone is into the same scene or uses the same news sources (if any) that you do. We're talking about a 19 year old. You really think her priority in life is knowing how the MPAA feels about piracy? You assume she has an internet connection, etc. Who the fuck knows?
Considering that at one time almost half the country thought Iraq was behind 9/11, it's not at all unreasonable to think that some people aren't aware of the MPAA/piracy thing.
Considering that at one time almost half the country thought Iraq was behind 9/11
Two years after 9/11 the number was almost 70 percent, but hey why let the facts get in the way of a good war?
Does it bother anyone else that in a disaster situation the state representatives (Senators, Governors, etc.) constantly feel the need to thank other state reps and whoever that are "providing constant support and are behind us 100%"? They also have to give pep talks and talk about how the city will be stronger for having gone through this, etc. instead of giving an update on the people involved. I would like to know how many are missing, what the situation of the search and recovery is, and what exactly occurred. I don't want to know that some random Senator from some random unrelated state is "supporting the effort" and that in 5 years I'll look back with sorrow but be proud to be an American. Clearly the only time we should be proud to be American is in the face of disaster. Sorry I guess I'm just a little testy today.
The woman arrested in the theater is obviously too young to remember "Don't Copy That Floppy."
http://www.archive.org/details/dontcopythatfloppy
"The other irritating thing about the VA budget piece was how they define "tax cut" as "not raising taxes that year." By that rationale, since I didn't get a bonus this year, my SALARY WAS SLASHED!"
The way you framed that is not quite right. It's more accurate to say that "Since I didn't get a COLA this year, my salary was slashed!"
And it would be, too. At least for everyone who is subject to real world economics where the value of money is tied to its purchasing power and isn't some static number on a piece of paper.
Monkey, was your salary slashed because you spend so much time writing comments to DCist? ;)
This is why y'all need to work for the governemnt. Plus, there is so much free food floating around these offices it's like a cruise on a ship that never goes anywhere and has a bad view. And no Leigionaire's disease. But that's beside the point. The point is, stretch your salary with free government doughnuts!
11. That's just my opinion, but anyone who has seen any form of news in the past, oh, 6 years MAY/SHOULD have known this. But, again, my point is that she's being penalized for being stupid. My assumption is that she can maybe read the interwebs and may have seen the news on a television. She is in college. People go to college to learn things. I will make another assumption that in order to get into college, she's at least moderately informed. At 19 after presumably a year at Marymont, maybe she's heard about crackdowns on piracy. Maybe not. I've been to Marymount before and don't remember seeing any mud huts or hamsters in wheels generating electricity. I do know the tuition is expensive. Maybe they have the interwebs or the Post for the students to not read. Maybe I assume too much. It's a damn funny story to read on a Thursday over my coffee though.
Unrelated, but $5 to you for getting a mention of the war into an unrelated DCist thread. Kudos.
"Was this a brilliant criminal mind at work, believing anyone who happened upon him would be distracted by the fact that he was wearing no pants? Or was he just a little hot, and trying to get comfortable?"
Maybe the dry cleaners lost his pants, too.
hillrat - That's probably the same 70 percent that claims to read the Bible regularly, yet cannot name all four books of the Gospels, and manages to confuse the Bible with Ben Franklin.
Here is some slightly dated (2003) info on our most vulnerable bridges. Some are already being repaired or replaced.
The 20 most deficient D.C. area bridges carrying at least 10,000 vehicles a day
1 Virginia Arlington WASHINGTON BLVD. COLUMBIA PIKE 1944 67,000
2 Maryland Montgomery WAYNE AVENUE SLIGO CREEK 1960 17,200
3 Maryland Prince George's 23RD PARKWAY OXON RUN 1950 12,800
4 DC DC NINTH STREET, N.E. PENN RR & B&O RR 1941 25,000
5 DC DC BENNING ROAD ANACOSTIA RIVER 1934 68,400
6 Maryland Montgomery BRINK ROAD GOSHEN BRANCH 1930 12,060
7 Maryland Prince George's MD 450 CSX TRANS. 1926 24,450
8 Maryland Prince George's BOCK ROAD HENSON CREEK 1959 11,650
9 Maryland Prince George's COLUMBIA PARK ROAD AMTRAK/CSX/WMATA 1977 18,930
10 Virginia Fairfax LEE HIGHWAY LITTLE ROCKY RUN 1932 32,110
11 Maryland Montgomery JONES MILL ROAD COQUELIN RUN 1949 22,700
12 Virginia Fairfax RTE 236 RTE. I495 & ACCOTINK CK 1961 22,023
13 DC DC KENILWORTH AVE BURROUGHS AVE & RAMP B 1956 117,000
14 Maryland Montgomery NICHOLSON LANE CSXT RAILROAD 1964 31,100
15 DC DC I-295 NB O ST, ANACOSTIA RIVER 1965 42,600
16 Virginia Arlington WASHINGTON BLVD. RTE. 110 (JEFF DAVIS HWY 1942 46,945
17** Maryland Prince George's I-95 WILSON BRIDGE POTOMAC RIVER 1961 190,000
18 Virginia Arlington G.W. MEM. PKWY. NORTH ENTRANCE 1941 20,800
19* DC DC P STREET, N.W. ROCK CREEK 1935 15,700
20 Virginia Fairfax BACKLICK ROAD SOUTHERN RAILWAY 1966 36,933
http://www.tripnet.org/BridgeStudyDCApr03.PDF